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IRELAND 

YESTERDAY 
AND TODAY 




Photo copyright, lc09, by Hallen. N. Y. 

JOHN E. REDMOND, M. P 
Chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party. 



IRELAND 



By HUGH SUTHERLAND 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 
JOHN E. REDMOND, M. P. 



THE NORTH AMERICAN 

PHILADELPHIA 
1909 






COPYRIGHTED. 1909, BY 
THE NORTH AMERICAN" CO., 
PHILADELPHIA. 



©CLA256 



INTRODUCTION 

The Irish people owe much to America — more, per- 
haps, than to any other nation in existence. The friendship 
between the two countries has been of long standing. The 
Irish exiles, driven forth by the exactions of landlordism in 
the early years of the eighteenth century, powerfully con- 
tributed to the victory of Washington and to the establish- 
ment of the republic on a basis of strength and security. 
The idea of the Irish Volunteers, who won.Grattan's Parlia- 
ment, came from America. In the "dark and evil days" of 
'98, and during the post-Union struggles, down to the time 
of the Great Famine, Ireland could always command a large 
and generous sympathy in America. Whilst the British 
government refused to recognize the extent of the Famine, 
which was the direct consequence of British misrule, the 
American government forwarded shiploads of food and 
clothing for our starving people. 

When the Great Clearances swept millions of our race 
from the homes of their fathers and doomed them to emi- 
gration beyond the seas, America gave them a welcome with 
open arms. The leaders of the Young Ireland movement 
and of the Fenian movement found hospitality and help in 
America. And, when Parnell appeared upon the scene, it 
was America that hailed him as the deliverer of his country 
and gave the greatest impetus to his success. Since then the 
sympathy and support of America for Ireland have been 
never-failing. 

When I refer to America in this connection, I do not 
mean merely Irish-America, from which Ireland naturally 
expects support, both sentimental and material. I mean 
America as a whole, the thinking men of all parties in the 
republic, whose sympathy constitutes one of the greatest 
assets of the Irish movement for national self-government, 
because it is morally impossible for England to maintain in 



vi INTRODUCTION 

Ireland a system which the judgment of America reprobates 
and condemns. 

This sympathy of America has been made manifest in 
many ways, but in none more constantly or more effectively 
than in the public press of the country. Some of the greatest 
of American newspapers have been steadfast and persistent 
champions of the Irish cause, and amongst the most widely 
circulated and most influential of these great molders of 
public thought and action a high place of honor must be 
given to The North American, of Philadelphia, the reputa- 
tion of which, as a leading exponent of American ideals, is 
not confined to< the United States, but enjoys a recognition 
which is world-wide. 

Some seven years ago, when the Irish movement was 
passing through one of its most exciting and critical stages, 
the proprietors of The North American sent one of the ablest 
members of their staff, Mr. Hugh Sutherland, over to 
Ireland to> describe, for the information of the American 
people, the Irish situation as he found it. The result was a 
series of brilliant and illuminating articles, which attracted 
widespread attention, and which served to concentrate Ameri- 
can interest on the nature and the importance of the struggle 
which was then taking place in Ireland. 

Meantime, the Irish cause has been marching on, and 
the effects of the concessions wrung by the Irish Party from 1 
the British Parliament have begun to make themselves appar- 
ent in various directions. In order to describe these effects 
and to strengthen the appeal of the Irish people to America 
for a continuance of its sympathy and support during the 
final stages of the national movement, Mr. Sutherland was 
this summer again deputed by The North American to visit 
Ireland and to record his impressions of its changed condi- 
tion as compared with that when he previously visited it, 
and this he did in a second series of letters no less remark- 
able than the first. 

The publication of these letters in book form and their 
wide circulation in America cannot fail to be of enormous 
service to Ireland. Without, of course, binding myself to 
an absolute acceptance of every opinion expressed in the 
letters, I have no hesitation in stating that I recognize in 



INTRODUCTION vii 

them a powerful, eloquent and convincing plea on behalf of 
Ireland. They exhibit a thorough and comprehensive grasp 
of the Irish question in all its details, historical, political, 
moral and material, and for these reasons I heartily com- 
mend this volume to the serious consideration of American 
politicians and thinkers of all parties and of all creeds. 



<£- 




Aughavannagh, Aughrim, 

County Wicklow, Ireland, 
November 12, 1909. 



PREFACE 

This book is made up from letters written by the Associate Editor 
of The North American, of Philadelphia, and published in that news- 
paper in 1902 and 1909. During these two years the writer visited 
Ireland and studied the conditions which have given rise to the com- 
plex and interesting problem known as "the Irish Question." The 
volume records his observations at these two periods. 

The first section, "The Problem of the Land," comprises the let- 
ters of 1902. The second section, "The Land Problem Solved," 
comprises letters on the economic conditions found in 1909, and sets 
forth the wonderful progress made in seven years toward accomplish- 
ing the vast and intricate task of replacing landlordism by a system 
of tenant proprietorship. The third section, also written in 1909, is 
a discussion of "The Demand for Home Rule." 

When The North American undertook, seven years ago, the treat- 
ment of these matters the Irish Question was little understood by 
Americans. Generations of agitation, marked often by bitter fac- 
tional strife, had even dulled public interest in a problem affecting 
the very life of a sister nation. Moreover, the American press had 
acquired a habit of ignoring or slighting the Irish struggle for 
justice. This avoidance was due, first, to a fear of arousing secta- 
rian animosities, and, second, to indifference. The North American 
had no such fear, having confidence in the good sense and fairness 
of American public opinion when rightly informed, and felt no such 
indifference toward the fate of a people bound to this nation by 
strong ties of blood and sympathy. 

It is creditable to American newspapers that to-day they discuss 
the economic problems and the national demands of Ireland far more 
freely and frankly than ever before. It is creditable to Great Britain 
that she is dealing courageously and broad-mindedly with the urgent 
needs of land reform, and that public opinion, even in England, now 
indorses the century-old demand of Ireland for self-government, no 
less than five hundred of the six hundred and seventy members of the 
present House of Commons being advocates of Home Pule. 

The purpose of this book is to present an American view of both 
economic and political conditions in Ireland seven years ago and 
to-day, partly for the interest such presentation may have for those 



PREFACE ix 

of Irish blood and sympathy, but chiefly for the information of the 
American public and American newspapers. The material has been 
gathered through personal observation of conditions and personal 
examination of official reports and records. Beyond this, most of 
the proofs have been read by government officials, and the facts and 
figures in regard to the government works may be accepted as ac- 
curate. For the comment thereon, of course, the writer alone is 
responsible. 

The historical summaries, particularly those referring to the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have been sharply assailed by 
readers moved by religious feelings ; hut, as the authors quoted are in 
most instances of British birth and sympathies, the statements can 
hardly be challenged as prejudiced in favor of the Irish view. It is 
impossible to treat adequately, in a few pages, the history of seven 
hundred years ; but the writer is satisfied that what is written is true 
and necessary to an understanding of the economic and political con- 
ditions of to-day. 

As to the religious factor, this is discussed somewhat informally, 
but quite frankly, in the "Postscript" on page 225. It might not be 
a bad idea to read the postscript before reading the book. 

Authorities consulted by the writer included many government 
records, such as the reports of the Devon Commission (1845) ; De- 
partment of Agriculture; Land Commission; Estates Commission- 
ers; Congested Districts Board; Local Government Board, and Irish 
Universities Commission, besides the numerous Acts of Parliament 
dealing with land, laborers, local government and education; the 
speeches of Gladstone, Bright, Derby, Bedmond and other leaders, 
and the writings of Bryce, John Richard Green, Goldwin Smith, 
Lecky, etc. Valuable material was gleaned from the following books : 

"The Kingdom of Ireland" (1887), by Charles George Walpole; 
a history to the time of the Union. 

"Ireland and the Empire" (1901), by T. W. Russell, Unionist M. P. 

"A Hundred. Years of Irish History" (1902), by R. Barry O'Brien. 

"The Fall of Feudalism in Ireland" (1904), by Michael Davitt. 

"Ireland and the Home Rule Movement" (1907), by Michael F. J. 
McDonnell. 

"Contemporary Ireland" (1908), by L. Paul-Dubois; an exhaustive 
study by a French scholar and historian. 

"The Making of Ireland and Its Undoing" (1909), by Alice Stop- 
ford Green (Mrs. John Richard Green); an impressive histori- 
cal narrative of the destruction of Irish commerce and indus- 
tries by legislation. 

"Dublin Castle and the Irish People" (1909), by R. Barry O'Brien; 
a minute and authoritative account of the present system of 
government in Ireland. 

The writer is glad to acknowledge especially the courtesy and 



x PREFACE 

aid of Mr. Henry Doran, Chief Land Inspector of the Congested Dis- 
tricts Board, whose skill as an administrator and tireless devotion to 
an arduous office have had much to do with the economic transforma- 
tion in the most unfortunate parts of Ireland. Acknowledgment is due, 
also, to John Dillon, M. P., for assistance in gathering facts, and to 
John E. Redmond, M. P., Chairman of the Irish Parliamentary 
Party, for his valued and effective Introduction. 

One word more may be permitted in regard to the publication of 
this book. Its purpose was best explained in a letter from the writer 
to Michael J. Ryan, Esq., of Philadelphia, President of the United 
Irish League of America, which was read by him at a mass meeting 
in the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, on November fifth, 1909. 
The letter was as follows: 

"I regret that I find it impossible to accept your invitation to appear 
at to-night's meeting. ... I should be very much gratified, how- 
ever, if you would make an announcement by reading this letter and 
adding such comments as may occur to you. 

"A very strong and flattering demand has been expressed that the 
letters upon Irish affairs, published in The North American in 1902 and 
1909, should be put in book form. Though the interest in the articles 
was wide and their effectiveness in spreading information upon a little 
understood subject has been generously commended, The North Ameri- 
can feels that their preservation in permanent form will have more 
lasting results. This thought has been most cordially indorsed by 
Irish leaders both here and in Ireland. Mr. Redmond and Mr. O'Connor, 
among others, have written me urging the publication, and the Chair- 
man of the Irish Parliamentary Party has thought it worth while to 
write an introduction for the book. 

"As The North American has no other purpose than to aid in 
spreading a general understanding of the Irish problem, it sought 
these indorsements before attempting the publication. Having re- 
ceived them, it enters cordially into the project. * * * 

"In this connection I wish to make it perfectly clear that neither 
The North American nor the writer will take any profit whatsoever 
from the publication. The North American has supported the Irish 
cause because this newspaper's policy demands the advocacy of every 
movement looking to liberty and good government. It has gone much 
further in this direction than any other newspaper, because it is con- 
vinced that the project is deserving and that it needs persistent cham- 
pionship in order to win for it that without which it would fail — the 
public opinion of America. 

"For these reasons The North American dedicates the forthcom- 
ing book to the Irish people, and cordially offers the profits to the 



PREFACE xi 

advancement of the cause. All who purchase t^e book, therefore, and 
induce their friends to purchase it, may have the satisfaction of know- 
ing that the proceeds of each copy sold, above the bare cost of publica- 
tion, will add to the funds of the Irish Nationalist movement. 

"In view of these facts, we invite you and all other officers of the 
League, and all good Irish men and women, to do what you can toward 
distributing the volume, and making it, so far as it is worthy, an Ameri- 
can textbook of Ireland's progress and Ireland's national aspirations." 

In regard to the book, the writer has no other ambition than thai 
this hope shall be realized. 

HUGH SUTHERLAND. 
Philadelphia, December first, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

I. THE PROBLEM OF THE LAND 



CHAPTER 

I. THE BEGINNINGS 



II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XL 

XII. 



THE MAKING OF THE PROBLEM 
WHAT IRISH LANDLORDISM IS 
EFFECTS OF LANDLORDISM 
VIEWS OF AN AGITATOR 
LIFE UNDER LANDLORDISM 
A MAN WHO KNOWS 
THE HUMAN SIDE . 
SOME OF THE RECORD . 
CONGESTION AND MIGRATION 
THE WAR ON LIBERTY . 
WHAT COERCION IS 



PAGTS 
1 
11 
16 
21 
29 
40 
48 
54 
67 
72 
81 
91 



II. THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

XIII. AFTER SEVEN YEARS 103 

XIV. AN EVICTION . . ■ 118 

XV. CONGESTION REMEDIED 126 

XVI. THE BRIGHTENED LAND 144 

XVII. THINGS SEEN .152 

XVIII. A REMNANT OF LANDLORDISM . . .162 

XIX. ONE MAN AND HIS WORK 168 

XX. EDUCATIONAL REFORM 174 

XXI. A SUMMARY . . . ' 181 

III. THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

XXII. THE CONQUESTS OF IRELAND . . . .185 

XXIII. PENAL LAWS 197 

XXIV. SOLD OUT 203 

XXV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY .... 208 

XXVI. MISGOVERNMENT 219 

XXVII. DUBLIN CASTLE 228 

XXVIII. THE SYSTEM A FAILURE 239 

XXIX. HOME RULE TESTED 248 

POSTSCRIPT: THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION . 255 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

John E. Redmond, M. P Frontispiece 

PACING PAGE 

How Battering Ram Was Used in Evictions xvi ^ 

Burned Out : Ruins of Houses After Evictions 8 ' 

Evicted! 16 ■' 

Turf Hut Occupied by an Evicted Family 24 

A Relic of Eviction Days 32^ 

To Be Replaced by a Decent Home 32 

Battering a Breach in the Wall 40 

A Remnant of Landlordism 48 v 

Village of Lough Glynn 48 

Pat Tuohy and His Jaunting Car 56 " 

Better Than the Old Style 56 

Constabulary at an Eviction 64 v 

Bernard King and His Stable Home 64 

A Business Street in Castlebar, County Mayo 72 

Map Showing Congested Districts Page 74 

PACING PAGE 

John Fitzgibbon 80 «/ 

Improvements on Clare Island 80 

A Pretty Irish Cottage 88 

Spinning 83 

Part of a Grazing Estate Divided Into Farms 96' 

Family Moved From This House 104- 

Now Occupied by Family That Moved 112 

Battering Ram at an Eviction in Kerry, 1909 120 

Bringing Home the Turf 128 v 

Henry Doran, Chief Land Inspector, Congested Districts Board.. 136 

Foreman Showing Report to Mr. Doran 136 

Tenant Purchaser Erecting New Home 144 

Not Pretty, But Comfortable 144 

Drainage Work by Congested Districts Board 152 

Father O'Hara, Instructing Workman (Mr. Doran at Right) .... 160 



xvi ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

Making a Field: The First Crop of Stones Dug From the Soil... 168 

Royal University, Now Part of National University of Ireland.. . 176 

A Courtyard in Trinity College, Dublin 184 

College Green, Dublin: Bank of Ireland on Left, Trinity College 

on Right 192 

One of the New Houses 200 ' 

Improvements by Tenant Purchaser 200 

Coming From Market 208 

A "Milkman" 216 

The Captured House After Kerry Eviction 224 

Royal Constabulary at Kerry Eviction 232 

John Dillon, M. P 240 

A Relic of the Past 248 

A Home of Today 248 

Bank of Ireland, Dublin, Where Irish Parliament Met, 1782—1800. 256 



THE PROBLEM OF 
THE LAND 

I 

*THE BEGINNINGS 

The Irish people have been fighting for their lives and 
their homes for seven centuries, and to-day few but them- 
selves know the history, causes or present rights of the dis- 
pute. The Irish question to them is a religion, a sacred 
struggle, in which each succeeding generation makes sacri- 
fices. To the world it is a by-word and a jest. The busy 
folk in Europe and America run to and fro in the earth, 
spreading liberty and civilization according to their own 
views. Here is a race which has been prostrate for a hun- 
dred years, a land from which the people are being driven 
remorselessly by the effects of oppression and misgovern- 
ment. Yet the world is indifferent. This heartless acquies- 
cence is not due to intent, but to ignorance. How many 
Americans, save those of Irish birth, know the meaning of 
the ceaseless campaign for "free Ireland"? How many 
believe that it is anything more than a game of politics? 
How many look with true sympathy upon the indefatigable 
Irish obstructionists who more than once have stripped the 
mighty British Parliament of its dignity? If the writer, 
before coming here, possessed average knowledge in these 
matters, then the general ignorance is all but fathomless. 

*Chapters I, II, III and IV were written in Dublin in December, 
1902. 

I 



2 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

It becomes necessary, then, to clear away the mass of 
misapprehension which obscures the Irish problem. An 
honest effort is to be made in these letters to enlighten the 
American people in respect to this cause. The investigation 
will be thorough, and it is being made impartially and con- 
scientiously. In general terms, and briefly, an attempt will 
be made to establish these propositions, of which the writer 
has convinced himself: 

That the Irish people have suffered as no other people 
have suffered. 

That they have been the victims of injustice, oppres- 
sion, indifference and legislative blundering for many gen- 
erations. 

That during the last thirty years they have been granted 
an increasing measure of justice by wise statesmanship, and 
will gain more. 

And, finally, that the world-wide campaign now swing- 
ing on toward victory is not rebellion against lawful author- 
ity, but the peaceful evolution of a people toward that liberty 
which they are the last of the western nations to receive. 

To my mind, only two things are necessary to turn 
public opinion overwhelmingly in favor of the Irish cause, 
and public opinion is the reinforcement by which these people 
will carry the last breastworks of selfishness and prejudice: 
First, knowledge of Irish history; second, to convince the 
world that the people are not chronic malcontents, but have 
a cause based on reason and justice. 

Let the appalling story of Ireland be closely read, and 
the causes underlying this struggle will become clear. And 
then, as to the ultimate aim, let it be understood that it is 
not the disruption, but the union, of the British empire; 
that the intent is not to* raise up a state which will threaten 
the imperial government, but a state which will become the 
strongest buttress of the best of England's power. 

There are those in America, I know, who believe that 
Ireland is fighting for absolute independence. Black mem- 
ories and blackened traditions have made them relentless 
enemies of England and dreamers of Ireland as a separate 
state, responsible to no authority save her own. But these 



THE BEGINNINGS 3 

revolutionists will find no worthy allies in the land of their 
hopes. 

Hatred of England has smoldered here for centuries, 
and now and again the hot flames of rebellion have flared 
up. Hatred of England is well nigh universal to-day. 
Sullen, bitter enmity is the attitude of men and women to 
the farthest limits of the island, and even the children are 
born and bred to* hate. But these things are the inevitable 
fruit of the weary years of oppression and the long indiffer- 
ence which followed. Let Ireland win simple justice, and 
this people will become the stanchest and most faithful 
partners in the empire. On this point I quote T. W. Russell, 
M. P., who has fought for forty years in the ranks of Irish- 
men against the evils of the land system, while steadily 
opposing Home Rule : 

"For seventy years of the last century Ireland was 
governed wholly in the interests of a class. The people 
never had one moment's consideration. The famine of 
1847, one °'f those mysterious dispensations by which Provi- 
dence asserts great principles, was ruthlessly used in the same 
interests. But Nemesis, long on the road, has at last arrived. 
The people are now supreme. The whole Irish question 
was settled when the vote was conferred, in the expressive 
language of the peasantry, on every 'smoke' — that is, upon 
every cabin from which the smoke of the turf fire ascends. 
This is the great fact of the age. The two races (Protestant 
and Catholic) are joining hand in hand even now for com- 
mon objects. In due time each will learn that much can be 
conceded with little or no* real sacrifice. And when this les- 
son has been truly learned Ireland will have real freedom, 
England will be released from the grip of a nightmare and 
the empire will be really united." 

True, it will take some time to win back the affection of 
the people, but not so 1 long as it took to inspire them with 
hatred. The depth of that hatred has been dangerously 
illustrated during the last three years. Irishmen in Parlia- 
ment and at home openly espoused the cause of the Boers 
against their own government. Technically they were guilty 
of treason. Actually they were expressing the sentiments 



4 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

of a race utterly alien to those who ruled them. Said one of 
the national leaders to me the other day: 

"You do not realize the deep-rooted enmity of our 
people toward England. They are rebels, lacking only 
arms. At those periods when the oppression has been most 
heavy any foreign power might have found an ally here. 
If the Emperor of China or the Sultan of Turkey had landed 
a force in Ireland, the people would have flocked to his 
standards against England." 

These are terrible words, but from what I have seen 
and heard, I believe they are true. A nation in unarmed 
rebellion — that is Ireland to-day. And yet this also is true : 
When the people shall have come again to their own, when 
the burden of injustice has been lifted from their shoulders 
and they rise up to greet the dawn of liberty, it will need 
only patience and care to win back the lost allegiance. This 
statement was made by the same man who uttered the words 
just quoted. 

The Irish question has such infinite ramifications that 
this brief introduction is necessary before taking up the 
detail. The problem was propounded centuries ago, and for 
the last hundred years has engrossed the attention of the 
British nation, with and without its consent. Libraries have 
been written upon it. The greatest statesmen of Europe 
have given years to its study. It has been the cause of end- 
less discussion, of rebellion, imprisonment, assassination, 
murder, sacrifice. In the face of such a record it seems hope- 
less to treat it, in a manner worthy of any attention, after a 
few weeks of investigation and research. Yet an honest 
effort can do much, at least, to dispel ignorance upon the 
most vital points. 

I think I can best make myself clear by stating the most 
obtrusive conditions which now prevail in Ireland. These 
are, briefly: 

Political — Widespread hatred and distrust of 
England. Peace insured by an armed garrison. 
A police force, paid by the Irish people, but controlled 
absolutely from London, scattered over the whole 
island, with judicial as well as administrative 
powers. "Coercion" enforced in twenty-one of the 



THE BEGINNINGS 5 

thirty-two counties, whereby free speech is suppressed, 
trial by jury suspended and public discussion, if 
displeasing to officials, results in arbitrary imprison- 
ment. In the British Parliament, the balance of power 
held by the Irish miembers, who- are united in a deter- 
mination to obstruct the government at every turn. In 
Ireland, the United Irish League, spreading its organ- 
ization everywhere, its platform embracing the aboli- 
tion of landlordism through compulsory sale of lands, 
and ultimately the establishment of national self- 
government. 

Economic — The nation is dying by inches. Every 
year the population grows less. In 1 800 it was 4,000,- 
000, in 1847 nearly 9,000,000. Now it is 4,456,000. 
Emigration is ceaseless. The young and vigorous of 
the race are fleeing from the island as though there 
were a blight. In the last fifty years 3,850,000 have 
fled from the land of their birth. Nowhere, save in a 
few restricted manufacturing districts, is there a condi- 
tion worthy to be called prosperity. Agriculture is the 
employment of eight-tenths of the population, and 
agriculture spells destitution. Hundreds of thousands 
exist only through contributions from! relatives in 
America and England. In thousands upon thousands 
of families the men and boys must spend six months of 
the year in England in order to earn enough money to 
carry the families through the winter. In a word, the 
Irish in Ireland are kept alive by the Irish who have 
been driven to other lands. 

Do not these conditions form a problem that shocks 
the mind? Here is a country two-thirds the size of Penn- 
sylvania, one great farm which seemingly needs but the 
touch of the husbandman to smile back in bounteous harvest. 
The Green Isle ! Ah, how green it is ! December is almost 
here, yet the fields look as fresh as ours in springtime, and 
I saw violets and primroses growing the other day when the 
sun set at four o'clock in the afternoon and winter darkness 
followed swiftly. Here lies the land, uncounted acres of it, 
waiting for the farmer, ready to yield its riches to a nation 
of millions, yet the people flee from it. From year to year 



6 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

the population shrinks. Instead of plenty there is poverty. 
Instead of rich farms, comfortable homes, a happy populace, 
the fields lie bare to the roaming of cattle. 

I have traveled from end to end of the country and 
back again, from sea to sea, visiting the cities, the towns, 
the villages, the tiny hamlets and farms. And there is one 
picture which blots out all else. It is desolation. Where 
the land is cruel and hard there the people are found fight- 
ing with supreme courage and desperation against hunger. 
Where the land is rich and radiant with promise of plenty 
there is utter loneliness. The people are gone. 

What is the meaning of this outrage against nature and 
humanity? By every law we know of governing human 
activity and the life of men this country should be populous 
and prosperous. Of all the countries where white men live, 
it is the only one where the number of souls grows less and 
less year by year. Fashioned from the beginning to be the 
home of many millions, beloved by its sons as no other land 
under heaven was ever beloved, it is reverting steadily to a 
place fit only for flocks and herds. Happily, the exodus is 
being somewhat checked, and there is growing promise that 
some day the level will begin to rise again. But in that the 
evil work of centuries has sapped Ireland's best blood, there 
lies against civilization a heavy debt. 

Wherein is the explanation of the steady depopulation 
of Ireland — of these conditions of unrest, hatred, poverty 
and hunger? It is named in two words — THE LAND. 

In all the endless story of oppression and wrong, this 
is the beginning and the end. By persecution, by war, by 
straightforward robbery, by famine and by unjust laws the 
people have been forced from their lands. Hundreds of 
thousands have perished miserably, millions have been driven 
into exile, hundreds of thousands are to-day living chiefly on 
the bounty of those who have been fortunate enough to 
escape. In all that shall be written, therefore, let the reader 
keep in mind the land. That is at the bottom of all trouble, 
and through it comes salvation presently. The wrangle of 
politics, the clash of creeds, the defiance of desperate people 
and the strong measures of insulted law and order — all have 
their rise in the dispute about the land. 



THE BEGINNINGS 7 

How can it be made clear that in the dispute the com- 
plaint of the people is just? I have heard men who have 
intelligent views on affairs of their own country declare that 
the trouble in Ireland exists because the people are chron- 
ically discontented, have an inborn prejudice against paying 
rent and murder their landlords rather than meet their just 
debts. As far back as the oldest living man can remember 
there has been the same dispute between landlord and 
tenant. It has become wearisome to those not interested. 
They have forgotten, or have never taken the trouble to 
learn, the foundations of the trouble. The placid house- 
holder in an American town, for instance, who religiously 
sends a check to his landlord on the first of the month, and 
never has a more serious dispute with him than might con- 
cern a leaky roof or a patch of soiled wall paper — how can 
such a man look with sympathy upon a people who form 
secret societies against landlords and send men to Parlia- 
ment pledged to the same unholy cause? There must be a 
readjustment of ideas before we can approach this question 
intelligently. The slate must be wiped clean for the recep- 
tion of new facts and new ideas. The Irish land problem 
has not its parallel anywhere. The conditions are as unique 
as they are heart-breaking. 

Since the land question, therefore, holds the solution of, 
all Ireland's troubles, it will be treated at length in these 
letters. But first we must lay the foundation for our case, 
and this foundation must be historical. The beginning of 
the struggle was in 11 69, when Strongbow, Earl of Pem- 
broke, the first Saxon invader of Ireland, descended on the 
coast of Wexford and subdued some of the Irish tribes, 
establishing the feudal system. Since then there has been a 
never-ending struggle of the people against those who ruled 
them. It is needless to< recount here the long history of the 
early period. Indeed, there is not space for it. But the 
English policy was always the same — to seize the land, 
reduce the free people to the status of farming serfs and 
quell their efforts to regain their freedom by the most strin- 
gent laws and exactions. 

Ingenious means were devised to crush the Irish spirit, 
and finally to exterminate the race. Under the early Henrys, 



8 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

laws were passed forbidding the English invaders to marry 
Irish persons. By these laws the natural enmity between the 
races was fostered. There was no desire to permit an 
amalgamation and peaceful division of the land. Hence end- 
less wars raged. For nearly four hundred years Ireland was 
racked with strife, until at last, under Queen Elizabeth, the 
subjugation of the islanders was completed for the time 
being. By that time great tracts of land, which had been in 
possession of the Irish, had passed to the descendants of the 
invaders. Industry — which was agriculture, of course — had 
been utterly prostrated. No man cared to till the ground, 
for, under the laws, the soldiery had the right to seize what- 
ever crops or property they needed or desired. As a sample 
of campaign methods, the report of one Malby in 1576 will 
be of interest. He wrote : 

"I marched into the territory of Shan Burke, with deter- 
mination to consume them with fire and sword. I burned all 
their corn and houses and committed to the sword all that 
could be found. 

"Then I burned Ulick Burke's country. In like man- 
ner I assaulted a castle, where the garrison surrendered. 
I put them to the misericordia of my soldiers. They were 
all slain. Thence I went on, sparing none which came in 
my way, which cruelty did so amaze their followers that they 
could not tell where to bestow themselves. Shan Burke made 
means to me to pardon him and forbear killing of his people. 
I would not hearken, but went on my way. * * * It 
was all done in rain and frost and storm, journeys in such 
weather bringing them the sooner to submission. They are 
humble enough now, and will yield to any terms we like to 
offer them." 

Through these expeditions the English learned of the 
value of the colony, and determined to develop it. Induce- 
ments were offered to sons of good families to undertake the 
colonization of large tracts, one condition being imposed, 
namely, that no Irish were to be permitted to settle on the 
grants. The land was parceled out to court favorites in 
tracts of 1000 to 20,000 acres and more. Thus the people 
were first driven from their homes. How they suffered one 
paragraph from a contemporary account will show : 



THE BEGINNINGS 9 

"No spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of the 
towns, and especially in wasted countries, than to see multi- 
tudes of the poor Irish lying dead, with their mouths all 
colored green from eating nettles, dock and such weeds as 
they could find on the ground." 

When the son of Catholic Mary Queen of Scots came 
to the throne the su*$ering people hoped for relief. The 
^answer to their hopes was the confiscation of six counties in 
Ulster, 3,750,000 acres. The Stuarts continued this policy 
to the limit, granting the richest tracts to favorites of the 
court, driving the poor people from their holdings and for- 
bidding the employment upon the grants of any native of 
Ireland. From these kingly robberies the land titles of most 
of the great landlords of to-day are derived. Sometimes 
there was a form of law in the methods of confiscation. 
Juries were appointed "to inquire into defective titles." It 
is only necessary to add that a juror who found a verdict 
against the Crown was imprisoned, pilloried or branded with 
a hot iron. Under this system 430,000 acres in Wexford, 
Wicklow and Leitrim were seized by the government and 
farmed out to those in favor at the court. 

In spite of this oppression and robbery, the Irish, 
inspired by religion and kingly promises, espoused the cause 
of Charles I. They had their reward, for when the King 
had been put to death Cromwell and his Roundheads 
descended on Ireland like a scourge. 

That chapter in history cannot be read without a shud- 
der. Massacre followed massacre, and at the end the whole 
country was declared forfeit to the government. Those Irish 
who 1 had managed to cling to fruitful lands were driven in 
the dead of the winter across the Shannon to the westward 
and forced to> make their homes on the most barren lands. 
Nearly 16,000,000 acres were thus seized and divided 
among English noblemen and others who had aided the 
Parliament. Under James II and William of Orange the 
depredations went on, and at the beginning of the eighteenth 
century the Irish people, to whom, had belonged the whole 
of the island, found themselves confined to an area of one- 
seventh of it, and this the most unproductive land. 

This is just a glance at the record of persecution and 



,o PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

confiscation in Ireland, but it will indicate the historical basis 
of the Irish claims. The people have been defeated more 
than once, but they have never yielded except to> brute force. 
Hatreds were engendered in those old days that burn as 
fiercely to-day. Every Irish child is taught by fireside story 
the tale of his forefathers' sufferings. Every lad grows up 
with the teaching that but for tyranny his people would be 
in possession of fair lands. Necessarily our account has been 
of the briefest description, and is here given merely to indi- 
cate how the land originally passed from the people to the 
great families of England and their descendants. This, 
however, makes possible an intelligent survey of the last 
hundred years, during which the Irish question has been the 
predominant factor in British politics. 

It has outlasted monarchs and their courts. Men have 
died, but it lives. The map of the world has been changed 
a hundred times, but it changes not. Through peace and 
war, famine and plenty, England is always confronted with 
Ireland and her question: "Will ye let my people go?" 

As the consideration of recent history must be post- 
poned, this thought should be stated here, lest any misunder- 
stand. The Irish people do> not ask that the crimes of the 
Tudors, the Stuarts and their successors be undone. They 
do not demand that the land stolen from their forefathers be 
given back to them. They only ask the opportunity to buy 
it. Still battling with hunger and death on the stony patches 
to which they were driven, they look with unutterable long- 
ing upon the fair land that surrounds them, and beg that 
they may be permitted to redeem it for their children. For 
a hundred years they have encamped in misery on the other 
side of Jordan, never faltering in the hope that some day 
they may cross over. 

On one side a starving people, on the other a land of 
plenty, desolate for need of people — that is the Irish ques- 
tion. 



II 

THE MAKING OF THE PROBLEM 

The unhappy condition of the people in some of the 
agricultural districts of Ireland has been described SO' often 
during past years that it would seem nothing more could be 
said. Yet to a stranger, an American, ignorant of the facts, 
the first view is a shock. I have now traversed the country 
more than once, visiting not only the towns and villages, but 
the settlements remote from the railroads, and the scenes I 
have witnessed are so vivid, so pitiful, that the pen aches to 
set them down. But this task must wait a little. It is easy 
to find misery anywhere. In our own cities destitution is 
unhappily familiar, and even in our generous country dis- 
tricts there may be discovered unwholesome conditions of 
life. This investigation is of small value unless it is shown 
first that the poverty and suffering are due to misgovernment 
and that the intolerable conditions can be relieved only by 
sweeping away the system of Irish landlordism. 

Those who properly revere the sacred rights of prop- 
erty need not take alarm at the proposition. It is the sober 
judgment of the best leaders of thought on the question, and 
will soon be embodied in the proposals of the British govern- 
ment. They must remember also that the United States does 
not know any such system of land holding as exists here. It 
is as foreign to their knowledge as the land laws of China. 
It is necessary, therefore, to withhold description of actual 
conditions here until these bases of judgment are established. 
My first letter sketched briefly the early history of Ireland 
and showed in outline how the seizures and confiscations, in 
war and peace, through forms of law and open persecution, 
resulted in transferring the land by wholesale from the native 
owners to English adventurers and court favorites. Thus, 
through the remorseless operation of conquest and greed, the 
Irish people became a nation of tenant farmers. 

11 



i2 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

In tracing the history of the land question I have talked 
with many men, among them those who have devoted their 
lives to the Irish cause. Most of all I am indebted to Mr. 
T. W. Russell, of Dublin, a member of Parliament. Mr. 
Russell is a Scotchman, has been in public life for nearly 
forty years and to-day is one of the greatest figures in the 
Irish struggle. He has been and is the friend and adviser 
of the people and of the statesmen as well. There is not a 
voice in England or Ireland which dare accuse him of waver- 
ing a hair's breadth from honesty and sincerity of purpose. 
He is a student, a thinker and a historian. He has made a 
lifelong fight for Union as against Home Rule. Further- 
more — and this is a greater evidence of impartiality than 
Americans imagine — he is a stanch Protestant. Upon all 
counts, therefore, he is a faithful and competent witness for 
the Irish people. In the succeeding review of the story of 
the land I take much of my evidence from his "Ireland and 
the Empire," published within a year, the knowledge so 
gained being fortified by personal interviews with leaders 
and by study of the highest authorities. 

The political history of the last century will be treated 
in detail at another time, but these few facts should be borne 
in mind: Ireland had her own Parliament from 1782 to 
1 800, and all historians agree that under that rule she 
enjoyed remarkable prosperity. In 1800, despite the pleas 
of the people, the Parliament was abolished and a union with 
England was forced by that country. Of the nature of this 
act it is only necessary to quote Gladstone, whose judgment 
few Americans will doubt. He said : 

"I know of no blacker or fouler transaction in the his- 
tory of man than the making of the Union between England 
and Ireland." 

For one hundred years, therefore, Ireland has been gov- 
erned absolutely by England. Mr. Russell's estimate is a 
terrible indictment : 

"Seventy of these years stand out a reproach and a disgrace 
to England. Nothing can well be worse than the record of the 
English in Ireland during this period. These years have wit- 
nessed several attempts at armed rebellion, suppressed, of course, 
by the superior power of England. They have seen the people, 
visited by a great famine, rushing from the country as if it were 



ITS MAKING 13 

plague stricken — 3,841,419 having gone across the ocean in fifty 
years, In other words, forty-seven per cent, of the population have 
fled from the country to seek bread under another flag. 

"These years have witnessed the reign of secret societies, of 
agrarian crime and of endless coercion acts. They have been 
dominated by a land system, which can only be described as sys- 
tematized and legal robbery of the poor. The governed were, in 
the main, helots and slaves; the governors were, to a large extent, 
callous and heartless tyrants. England had, unasked and unbid- 
den, taken over the government of Ireland. Where the duty was 
not shamefully neglected, it was exercised in the interests of a 
class alone. Until Mr. Gladstone arose, no subject people had 
ever been more basely treated or neglected by a conqueror." 

In view of such a record, when even the elementary 
liberties of the people were crushed by tyranny, it may be 
imagined that they suffered grievously in their centuries-old 
struggle for the land. That this has been and is the 
supreme issue one statement will show. The population of 
Ireland is a little over 4,450,000. Of these, nearly 3,500,000 
depend directly or indirectly upon the land for their sup^ 
port, for their daily bread. In America a bad season seldom 
means more than temporary retrenchment to> the agricultural 
element. Here a single failure of crops means absolute desti- 
tution to millions. Trade is instantly prostrated, and starva- 
tion becomes an imminent peril to hundreds of thousands. 
Hence it is that upon land reform hang the life and death 
of the Irish people. 

Now to> indicate very briefly the developments which 
have imposed the present cruel and absurd system of land 
tenure. 

In the earliest days the tribal system was in force, that 
is, the tillers of the soil paid certain tribute to their chief- 
tains. There was, in fact, dual ownership of the land, 
between the governors and the governed. The struggles 
which have endured for so many generations have been due 
primarily to the repudiation of the people's rights as land 
owners and the gradual seizure of the land by the governing 
class. Feudal tenure, an anachronism long swept away in 
other countries, still exists here, and the destruction of it is 
the only means of restoring peace. The most concise story 
of how the land was taken from the people is found in the 
report of the English Devon Commission, headed by the 
Earl of Devon, which was issued in 1845 after an investiga- 



i 4 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

tion covering two years. This report, which is a standard 
authority, says : 

"In the civil contentions which at various periods, and during 
many centuries, disturbed the repose of England and Scotland, 
property gradually passed from the feudal tenure of former times 
to the more civilized relation of landlord and tenant, as known to 
our present law. It is for us briefly to show how different has been 
the case with Ireland. Without entering at any length into the 
history of the past, we cannot avoid noticing a few prominent 
matters which exercise a material influence in producing the exist- 
ing relation of landlord and tenant. 

"We allude to the confiscations and colonizations of Elizabeth 
and James, the wars of Cromwell and, lastly, the penal code. The 
first of these led, in many instances, to the possession of large 
tracts by individuals whose more extensive estates in England 
made them regardless and neglectful of their properties in Ireland. 
Again, the confiscation of the lands of O'Neill, in the North, and 
Desmond, in the South, was followed by the plantations of Ulster 
and Minister. 

"The extensive settlement of Scotch and English in the coun- 
ties of Ulster has introduced habits and customs which give a 
different character to that province from other parts of the island. 
In Munster the colonization was more imperfectly carried out, and 
a class of (foreign) undertakers became the landlords of the native 
peasantry. 

"The adventurers who obtained debentures from Cromwell 
formed, for the most part, a small proprietary; and being generally 
resident, exercised an influence on the relations of society different 
from that produced by the large and absent grantees of former 
reigns. 

"These confiscations were followed at a later date by the enact- 
ment of the penal laws (against Roman Catholics), which, affecting 
as they did the position of Roman Catholics as regarded landed 
property, had a very general influence on society. 

"These laws, both in their enactment and in their subsequent 
relaxations, have materially affected the position of occupier and 
proprietor. They interfered with almost every method of dealing 
with landed property by those who profess that religion, and by 
creating a feeling of insecurity, directly checked their industry. 
The Protestant landlords, in letting their estates, were thus con- 
fined in the selection of their tenants to those who alone could 
enjoy any permanent tenure under them, and were exclusively 
entitled to the elective franchise. 

"Many of the landlords, therefore, parted with the whole or a 
great portion of their property for long terms, and thus avoided 
all immediate contact with the inferior occupiers, so that all the 
duties of a landlord were left for performance to a middleman. 

"This (letting to middlemen) was generally done so as to 
insure a large profit, and the poor occupiers were frequently 
exposed to great oppression. The system has entailed upon the 
country the most injurious consequences." 



ITS MAKING 15 

The facts here given are so important to an understand- 
ing of the question that I shall attempt to restate them in 
simpler terms: 

1. The land was taken from the people by force and 
conferred upon adventurers and titled favorites of the sov- 
ereigns. The means used were confiscation, colonization, 
seizure in time of war and as reprisal by the victors, and, 
finally, penal laws, which stripped Roman Catholics of nearly 
every right enjoyed by citizens under free government. 

2. In Ulster conditions are different from those pre- 
vailing elsewhere, because the new settlers, being English 
and Scotch, were favored by the granting of certain rights, 
and these endure to this day, whereas it was not until 1870 
that the same rights were conferred on the rest of the 
country. 

3. The very severity of the laws so hampered the 
owners living in England that they sublet their Irish estates 
to middlemen, who ground down the hapless peasantry at 
will. In this regard there is on record an astounding case. 
In an appeal made under the modern land laws it was shown 
that between one tiller of the soil and the owner of it there 
were no fewer than three middlemen. In other words, the 
farmer upon whom fell all the work had to produce rent for 
four different purses from his single holding. The court 
reduced the rent sixty per cent. 



Ill 

WHAT IRISH LANDLORDISM IS 

In considering the broad question of land tenure in Ire- 
land the vital thing to remember is this : Irish landlordism 
is totally different from English or American landlordism. 
In England, for instance, the proprietor of agricultural land 
owns the land and everything upon it. He builds the houses, 
the barns, the fences. He pays for the clearing and drain- 
ing and repairs the roads. The tenant receives from him 
an equipped farm, and supplies only the labor of tilling, pay- 
ing a rental based upon the land and improvements. 

"""In Ireland, on the contrary, the landlord supplied noth- 
ing but the land, which he or his ancestors received as a gift 
from the Crown. The tenant, under this system, pays exor- 
bitant rent for the bare ground. It is the tenant who must 
clear the land, drain it, make roads, build house and barn 
and fences. In fart, his industry alone creates from the bare 
soil the farml for which he pays rent. 

And here is the almost incredible fact: Until thirty 
years ago all the labor of the tenant, though he spent a life- 
time in making his farm, gave him absolutely no interest in 
the property. The fences he erected, the roads he made, 
the buildings he put up — all were the property of the land- 
lord. That was the law. And at any time, with or without 
cause, rent paid or rent unpaid, that tenant could be evicted 
from his home at the whim of the landlord, and the work of 
his lifetime passed automatically into the ownership of the 
landlord. 

Can the mind conceive of a system more monstrous, 
more absurd? Does it not more than justify Mr. Russell's 
estimate, when he calls it "systematized and legal robbery of 
the poor"? Does it not offer at least some palliation for the 
weary years of violence and assault, by which the oppressed 
people expressed their despair and misery? 

The history of Ireland is smeared with crime. In the 

16 



IRISH LANDLORDISM 17 

old days there were the cruel methods of the invading troops 
and authorities; in more recent times the bloody reprisals of 
the mob. Uncounted brutalities and murders have been 
charged against the secret organizations of the tenants 
during the last century. But in reading these horrible stories 
two facts must be kept constantly in view, if a just opinion 
is to be rendered: First, the land was taken from the people 
by violence and by the contemptible processes of religious 
persecution; second, when they were allowed to reclaim it, 
on the most exorbitant terms, all their labor was seized for 
the benefit of the landlords. This cannot be too strongly 
emphasized, for it is the very foundation of the struggle 
which has drenched the land in blood and made the Irish 
people a nation of rebels. Lord Russell, of Killowen, during 
his life was well known to Americans, who will accept any 
judgment delivered by him concerning rights under English 
law. I quote from him : 

"The claim of tenant right (part proprietorship in the 
land by the occupying farmer) is based upon this essential 
fact : Whereas in England a farm is let, equipped for use 
as a farm, and the covenant requires the landlord to keep 
up the farm buildings, houses, fencing and drainage, all this 
in Ireland is the work of the tenant." 

And yet, until Gladstone came to the rescue, in 1870, 
the lifework of the tenant counted nothing against the land- 
lord-made law. The landlord let the bare soil, perhaps a 
strip of bog or a patch on a stony hillside; for it must be 
remembered that land-hunger has been the curse of Ireland, 
and the people have always been compelled to beg for 
enough soil to give them a living. The tenant, then, took 
the bog or the patch of stones and erected his little cabin 
on it. Before he could raise a peck of potatoes he had to 
prepare the land. He had to clear out the stones, dig 
elaborate drains, build fences. It has been truly said that 
his first three crops were stones. In other words — it will 
seem incredible to the American farmer — the Irish peasant 
had to take the raw materials and actually make his farm 
with his own hands and with the most heart-breaking labor, 
meanwhile and always paying rent for a farm. 

"But," says the hard-working American, "what pioneer 



1 8 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

settler does not have to reclaim his land? Do you suggest 
that all this work should have been done for the farmer with- 
out cost to him ?" 

Wait a moment. Let us see what happened. The 
tenant had given, say, three years to the making of his farm. 
With infinite labor and by incredible self-sacrifice he drained 
the bog, dug out the stones with his hands and carted them 
away, and at last had made ready a patch of ground to grow 
food for himself and his family. At such time arrived the 
landlord's agent. With practiced eye he surveyed the 
improved land, estimated the labor spent upon it and raised 
the rent correspondingly. If the tenant had agreed to pay 
$20 a year for his three or four acres of stony soil, he was 
told that having cleared and drained it he would have to 
pay $40. 

Does the honest, hard-working American, who believes 
in paying his rent with his other debts, begin to see why the 
Irish tenant has been an agitator and a lawbreaker for gen- 
erations? Remember, there was no law to which he could 
appeal. He was as much at the mercy of the landlord as 
the negro of the South was at the mercy of his owner. The 
titled proprietor in England left everything to the middle- 
man or to his own personal agent. The tenant was ground 
between the agent and the soil. There was no escape. 

Suppose he paid the increase ordered, nothing more nor 
less than a penalty for his industry. The next year his land 
yielded a crop. Again the agent came, estimated the value 
of the yield and raised the rent again. So the grinding went 
on, from year to year, the uttermost farthing being wrung 1 
from the farmer, until the inevitable time came when he 
could not pay. Having spent himself on the land, living on 
the verge of starvation in order to meet the steadily increas- 
ing demands of the landlord, knowing that the harder he 
worked the more he must pay, he found himself at last at 
the end of his resources. He could not pay the increased 
rent. Again there was no choice. By simple, cheap and 
effective process of law the tenant and his family were 
evicted, thrown out on the roadside to die or to start the 
weary struggle afresh in some new patch of bog or rocky- 
hillside. 



IRISH LANDLORDISM 19 

And what became of the product of his labor? Surely 
he could dispose of his interest in the land, the drains he had 
dug, the fences and houses and barns he had built? Not to 
the extent of one farthing. By the very process of eviction 
all improvements passed into the possession of the landlord. 
The starving family on the roadside were even poorer than 
before they started. They might go where they would. All 
the landlord's agent had to do was to take a new tenant. 
This new tenant could afford to pay the high rent demanded, 
for he found a farm, and buildings ready to support his 
family. He took possession, and remained until the wrench- 
ing of the thumbscrews each year brought him, too, to the 
limit of his ability to pay, and then he, too, was thrown out. 

Such, in brief, was the system of land tenure in Ireland 
for generations. Nor is this the worst. The tenant was sub- 
ject to eviction not only for non-payment of rent, but abso- 
lutely at the whim or caprice of the landlord or agent. The 
serving of a formal notice toward the end of the year was 
sufficient. And the farmer was summarily ejected from his 
home; the labor of years, the property he had actually made 
with his own hands, was stolen. 

These statements are so astounding to one who meets 
the facts for the first time that I am constrained to quote 
English authority for them): 

Lord Kormanby — "In Ireland the landlord has a monopoly of 
the means of existence, and has a power for enforcing his bargains 
which does not exist elsewhere — the power of starvation." 

Mr. Nassau Senior — "The treaty between landlord and tenant 
in Ireland is not a calm bargain in which the tenant, having offered 
what he tbinlks the land worth, cares little whether his offer be 
accepted or not; it is a struggle, like the struggle to buy bread in 
a besieged town, or to buy water in an African caravan." 

John Bright — "Ireland is a land of evictions — a word which, I 
suspect, is scarcely known in any other civilized country. It is a 
country from which thousands have been driven by the will of the 
landlords and the power of the law." 

The Devon Commission — "It seems neither extraordinary nor 
unreasonable, that a tenant quitting a farm, either at his own 
desire or from any difference with his landlord, should obtain a 
sum of money in remuneration for his expenditure." 

Poulet Scrope, M. P. — "Though God gave the land of Ireland 
to the people of Ireland — to the many — the law has given it uncon- 
ditionally to the few. Even in the best of times, if the landlord 
refuses to the peasant the holding of a plot of land, if other starv- 
ing wretches outbid his offer for the patch of soil whose possession 



20 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

is as necessary to his existence as the air he breathes; if sickness 
or misfortune prevent his punctual payment of the enormous rent 
he has promised, and he and his family are ejected from the cabin 
which perhaps sheltered him from his birth — what remains? He 
must die ! The law allows him no other alternative." 

Preamble of Land Eeform Bill, 1836— "Whereas, It has long 
been the general practice in Ireland that all buildings have been 
erected and kept in repair, and all improvements have been made 
by the tenant and at his cost; and, whereas, the power of the land- 
lord in recovering rent and in evicting tenants from their holdings, 
and enforcing claims of every description by means of distress and 
ejectment, have been strengthened and extended by various acts; 
and, whereas, it is therefore just and expedient that a reasonable 
protection should be afforded to tenants making permanent and 
beneficial improvements on lands and tenements held for limited 
periods; therefore, be it enacted, etc." 

T. W. Russell, M. P. — "The common law in regard to tenants' 
improvements, previous to the act of 1881, was that they belonged 
to the landlord. This law put into the landlords' pockets hundreds 
of thousands of pounds of the tenants' capital. It enabled the 
landlords to gather where they had not strewed, to reap where they 
had not sown; it enabled them to rob the tenants by what is called 
'due process of law.' " 

This is a brief explanation, supplied by impartial 
authority, of the villainous conditions under which the Irish 
farmers existed for generations. In the province of Ulster, 
as already stated, the large proportion of English and Scotch 
settlers caused the growth of a more equitable arrangement, 
known to this day as the Ulster Custom. It was legalized 
and extended in 1870. Under it the tenant has a proprietary 
interest in his land, on account of any improvements he has 
made. The landlords are now fighting bitterly to abrogate 
the custom. But, taking Ireland as a whole, the mildest 
term to apply to the land system as it was is "legalized rob- 
ben- of the poor!" It remains now to show how justice is 
tardily winning its way. 



IV 

EFFECTS OF LANDLORDISM 

Under the grotesque land system which I have 
attempted to describe the condition of the Irish peasantry — 
practically the whole population — steadily became worse. 
The population — 4,000,000 in 1800 — more than doubled 
in the next fifty years, while poverty continued its remorseless 
spread. The situation may be imagined from an official 
description of conditions in certain districts only ten years 
ago. A report presented by Lord Balfour, of Burleigh, and 
Lord Blair Balfour said: 

"In these districts there are two classes, namely, the 
poor and the destitute. There are hardly any resident 
gentry; there are a few traders and officials, but nearly all 
the inhabitants are either poor or on the verge of poverty." 

How much worse must it have been seventy-five years 
ago, fifty years before the most elementary reform was 
adopted! Says Mr. T. W. Russell: 

"The country was, to a large extent, a rabbit-warren 
of paupers and beggars. The laws regulating the tenure of 
land — land being the sole source of livelihood for the great 
mass of the people — were perhaps the most iniquitous and 
unjust that ever disgraced any statute book in a civilized 
country. Trade and commerce were paralyzed. Law had 
ceased to be a terror to evildoers, because no punishment that 
it was capable of awarding could be worse than the fate of 
the dumb millions condemned to what was little better than 
a living death." 

Yet it was not until 1835 to l8 43 that the heartrending 
appeals of the Irish people could obtain even a hearing. 
During that period three bills were introduced, all having 
substantially the same objects — to protect the tenant against 
capricious eviction and to secure to him reasonable compen- 
sation, on being evicted, for the improvements which he had 
made on the land by his own unaided labor. And the result? 

21 



22 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

Every bill, these and others, was defeated, voted down con- 
temptuously by the Parliament, where the landlords were in 
absolute control. Even the plea that the systematic robbery 
of the tenants' labor should cease was denied. In 1845 tne 
commission headed by the Earl of Devon reported. I have 
already quoted some of its recommendations. Surely this 
might have been accepted as a just estimate of the terrible 
conditions. Yet twenty-five years passed before the English 
government raised a hand to ameliorate the cruel injustice of 
the land system. Gladstone's bill of 1870 was the first act 
of mercy. 

But long before this conditions which had been shocking 
had become ghastly. As had been shown, even in years when 
crops were reasonably good, the people were barely able to 
pay the exorbitant rents of their masters and keep life in 
their own bodies, while a touch of blight or unseasonable 
frost, or any reduction in the crop yield, caused universal 
destitution. And then the yield was a huge crop of evictions. 
With the people thus constantly on the edge of starvation, 
there befell the frightful catastrophe of the great famine. 
Potatoes formed almost the only food of the peasantry. In 
1845 ^e potato disease appeared, and in 1846-47 the whole 
crop vanished. The story of those years forms probably the 
most ghastly record of modern times. There is no need to 
retell it here. Men, women and children starved to death 
by thousands. The official report of the Census Commission 
in 1 85 1, after commenting upon the frightful death rate, 
said this : 

"But no pen has recorded the numbers of the forlorn 
and starving who perished by the wayside or in the ditches, 
or of the mournful groups, sometimes whole families, who 
lay down and died, one after another, upon the floor of their 
cabin, and so remained uncoflined and unburied until chance 
unveiled the appalling scene. No such amount of suffering 
and misery has been chronicled in Irish history since the days 
of Edward Bruce; and yet, through all, the forbearance of 
the Irish peasantry and the calm submission with which they 
bore the deadliest ills that can fall on man can scarcely be 
paralleled in the annals of any people." 

"But at least," says the justice-loving American, "the 



EFFECTS OF LANDLORDISM 23 

sufferings of the famine days brought some good. It called 
attention to the poverty of the people and the injustice of the 
system whereby they were made land slaves to the land- 
lords." 

Honest Englishmen to-day are ashamed that such a sup- 
position is not true. Not only did the famine fail to hasten 
mercy, but it was used by the landlords to inflict further 
hardship and suffering upon the helpless people. Evictions 
were enforced by wholesale. Only one question was put to 
the tenants : "Could they pay the rent?" As they could not 
even buy food, the question answered itself. And by thou- 
sands and tens of thousands the starving peasants were 
turned out on the roadside. This, of course, is ancient his- 
tory, and the impatient reader demands to know what the 
famine of 1847 nas to do with conditions in Ireland in 1902. 
It has everything to* do with it. For it was the famine and 
the evictions which followed which started the flight of the 
Irish from their own land, to continue to this day. There 
are thousands who read this story whose fathers or grand- 
fathers were victims of the eviction raids of '47, and who 
went, with countless thousands of their countrymen, to seek 
life and liberty in the United States. 

The record of Irish emigration during the last fifty 
years must be appalling to those whose hearts leap with 
patriotic love for the stricken land. The famine and the 
cruelty of the laws caused a veritable stampede to America. 
Thousands who sailed never reached the other side of the 
ocean, for the rush was so great that "coffin ships" laden 
with emigrants put out from Irish ports and foundered at 
sea. But millions did make the sad journey safely. The 
current then set in motion has never ceased. Year after year 
it has flowed westward, the young and vigorous of the race 
giving up the struggle here and seeking justice in a strange 
land. Between 1851 and 1900, 3,841,419 persons emi- 
grated from Ireland. Even the reforms of the last thirty 
years have hardly checked the tide to an appreciable extent. 
Not until full justice and liberty are granted to Ireland will 
her sons and daughters find life supportable in the land they 
love. 

What a frightful record it is ! Of the 9,000,000 who 



24 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

inhabited Ireland in 1845, more than half have disappeared 
by death and emigration. Half a nation has been swept 
away, and the rest are going. For even to-day no ship leaves 
these shores without Irish emigrants, and the deaths are 
greater in number than the births. Ireland is slowly perishing. 

But what of the amelioration already accomplished? 
The reforms adopted during the last thirty years amount to 
a revolution, yet they have accomplished only a fraction of 
what is necessary. A brief review of present laws must be 
given. 

The turning point was the Fenian Rebellion of 1866. 
The morality of that uprising need not be discussed here, 
but the fact remains that the rebellion attracted the attention 
which no appeals had been able to attract; that within five 
years the first reform, fought for at the cost of blood and 
tears, wretchedness and starvation, through seventy long 
years, was finally won. John Bright was the first Protestant 
Englishman of note to champion the cause of oppressed Ire- 
land, and to do so he braved calumny, abuse and even ostra- 
cism,. Then arose Gladstone, that lion in statesmanship, 
whose name must ever be honored by the Irish people. 

His Act of 1870, though to-day we regard it as the 
merest step toward justice, was in those days a priceless boon 
to the starving nation. It established for the first time and 
for all time that the tenant who devotes years of labor to 
clearing land and erecting buildings thereby acquires a pro- 
prietary interest in the whole, and that the product of his 
toil cannot be taken from him without payment. The prin- 
ciple was not stated in its full strength, but later acts which 
superseded the Act of 1870 made the foundation solid. 
Further, and quite as imlportant, the act forbade capricious 
eviction, or rather provided that such summary action should 
be accompanied by remuneration. 

Needless to say, the right of the landlord to evict a 
tenant under certain circumstances has never been questioned. 
The only thing restricted was the custom of arbitrary eviction 
without cause. An elaborate system of compensation was 
established, whereby the evicted tenant, or the tenant leaving 
his farm for whatever cause, had a claim for remuneration 
for the improvements he had made, and also for ejection, if 



EFFECTS OF LANDLORDISM 25 

such were invoked against his will. This, though few persons 
realized it, was a recognition of the fact that the occupying 
tenant, by his labor, created not only a property right, but 
an occupation right. This was the beginning of the doom 
of landlordism, now moving irresistibly to its end. 

As might have been expected, as soon as the landlords 
awoke to the significance of the law some of them began a 
systematic campaign to evade its provisions. 

A word of explanation is due here. There is no neces- 
sity to say that all landlords are not greedy oppressors. 
There have been and are to-day among them men of the very 
highest principle — men who believe in and practice fair deal- 
ing with their tenants. But it is equally true that most of 
them have been obdurate and selfish in taking advantage of 
unjust laws. But it should be remembered that all this 
oppression cannot be charged to titled Englishmen, for the 
following reason : 

Appalled by the horrors of the famine, the Parliament, 
with the usual misconception of the trouble, applied the 
remedy of changing landlords. It was deemed wise that 
landlords who, through their own improvidence or the burden 
of ancestral debts, could not discharge the obligations of 
landlordism as it existed in England — mark the ignorance — 
should be compelled to give up their holdings. The cry went 
up that Ireland needed capital. Therefore, in 1848 the 
Incumbered Estates Act was passed. Sir Charles Russell, 
afterward Lord Chief Justice, said of it a few years ago : 

"It is hardly conceivable that a Legislature should have 
so misconceived the position. What did the act do? It sold 
the estates of the bankrupt landlords to men with capital, 
who were mainly jobbers in land, sold them with the accumu- 
lated improvements and interests of the tenants and without 
the slightest protection to the tenants against forfeiture and 
confiscation of these improvements by the new owners. 

"It proved a cause of the gravest evil, for it is literally 
true to say that among the worst cases of landlord oppression 
in Ireland have been the cases of men who, with their fresh 
capital, came in and bought these estates; jobbers in land 
who were not restrained by any feelings of kindness because 
of ancient connection with an ancient peasantry and an ancient 



26- PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

proprietary house. I have seen property after property sold 
in that court, in which, as an inducement to the intending 
buyer, were held forth the alleged low rentals at which the 
property was then let and the possibility that he might, by 
another turn of the screw, raise the rent and increase his 
percentage return on the land." 

When they came to take advantage of the Act of 1870, 
therefore, many of the tenants found that the landlords, 
those whose only idea was to squeeze the last penny out of 
the land, had methods of evasion. The act provided no 
means for resisting capricious rent-raising. Hence the land- 
lord, compelled to compensate an evicted tenant for that 
tenant's buildings and improvements, simply recouped him- 
self by raising the rent to the incoming tenant. Again, by 
working on the tenants' fears of being dispossessed without 
cause, they induced many of them to sign long-term leases, 
the harassed farmer being willing to sign almost any con- 
tract so as to be assured of possession of his farm for a 
stated period. Sir Charles Russell said: 

"Leases were forced upon the tenants wholesale; con- 
tracts were made by which the tenants contracted themselves 
out of benefits of the act." 

This law was therefore soon made useless. Then came 
bad crop seasons, in 1879-80. As was inevitable, the tenants 
could not stand the strain, living always, as they did, at the 
limlit of their resources. Again wholesale evictions took 
place. The Land League was formed, and became a terrible 
power, supported chiefly by the money of Irishmen in 
America. The whole land was racked with crime. Boycot- 
ting, cattle-maiming, assault, burning, assassination shocked 
the world. And once more the Irish people learned the dan- 
gerous lesson that an outburst of violence was always 
followed by concession. The Bessborough Commission 
reported, and the way was clear for the great charter of the 
Irish farmer, the Act of 1881. 

Having reached this point, we may properly hasten the 
review. The bill established three great principles — the 
three identical principles which had been fought for by one 
of the Land Leagues in 1851 — namely, fair rent, fixity of 
tenure, free sale. These were known then, and are known 



EFFECTS OF LANDLORDISM 27 

now, as the three F's, and their adoption was the beginning 
of justice for the Irish farmer. Under these provisions the 
law discriminated between the land, the property of the land- 
lord, and the improvements, the property of the tenant. A 
tribunal was created to hear evidence impartially and period- 
ically to fix reasonable rents upon the lands; the improve- 
ments were not to be alienated from the tenant. His tenure 
was to be fixed — he could not be evicted except for refusal to 
pay the rents named by the court, or other reasonable cause. 
And he had a certain right of sale of his interest in the 
property. 

This bill, as stated, conferred upon the tenants the 
greatest measure of justice they had ever received. But it 
had serious defects. It applied only to yearly tenants. 
Leaseholders — there were 35,000 of them — were excluded 
from the benefits. Thus one farmer could claim the protec- 
tion of the court, while his neighbor a hundred yards away 
was powerless. It was six years before this injustice was 
remedied in part and nine years before it was remedied com- 
pletely. Since that time more than 30,000 leaseholders have 
had their rents reduced by the court. But, as before, the 
administration of the law was defective. An inquiry in 1894 
showed that the valuations had been made too high and 
that under a famous decision — Adams vs. Dunseath — the 
landlords were still collecting rent upon houses and other 
improvements made by the tenants. Supplemental bills in 
1887, 1890 and 1896 improved matters very much. But 
still there was a weak point, and it still exists. That is, the 
very Land Commission in whose hands rest the poor for- 
tunes of the tenants. On this point I quote Mr. T. W. 
Russell : 

"The commission now consists of two judges of the 
Supreme Court and four laymen. Out of the six members 
of this great department, which deals with almost the entire 
landed property of the country, only two have even the most 
elementary knowledge of land, and only one is recognized 
by the tenants as having the slightest regard for their inter- 
ests. This is the exact position to-day. No person in Ire- 
land, be he landlord or tenant, professes to have the slightest 
confidence in this court. It is not that anybody imputes or 



28 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

thinks of corruption — nothing of the kind — but it is univer- 
sally felt that bias and prejudice exist to such an extent as 
morally to invalidate its whole procedure." 

Furthermore, the court has failed to settle the dispute 
over improvements made by tenants. The rents, it should 
be understood, are fixed for periods of fifteen years. A 
tenant may have proved to the court in 1882 that he erected 
certain buildings and made certain improvements. But at 
the end of the period he must prove it all over again in 
order to get a new, reasonable valuation. Many of the 
records have disappeared, witnesses are dead or abroad — 
and the landlord calmly demands proof of every single claim 
advanced. Facing these difficulties, and knowing that he can 
get justice only by long litigation and at great proportionate 
expense, it is no wonder that the hapless tenant still com- 
plains. 

This, then, is the record of the hundred years, very 
briefly and imperfectly told. When those who hope for 
Ireland's future hear sneers about "chronic discontent" and 
"foolish agitation," let them ask the critics of a struggling 
people to remember these things : That for seventy years 
of the last century — the century of enlightenment and prog- 
ress — the Irish peasantry groaned under a villainous system 
of oppression and robbery, and that all their appeals went 
unheard; that the reform of 1870 was rendered invalid by 
the astute maneuvers of unscrupulous landholders; that even 
the great Act of 1881 and those which followed have left 
many thousands in misery; that to>-day, in this year of grace 
1902, a half million people are living under conditions which 
are a disgrace to civilization, and that the poverty and desti- 
tution — I have seen a little and am sick with it — are to-day 
due wholly and solely to the iniquities of the land system. 

Much, truly, has been gained in the last thirty years. 
But still the cry of Ireland, the cry of a suffering nation, is 
heard through the earth. In the name of gratitude and 
common sense, says the impatient American, what do these 
Irish want more? We shall see. 



*VIEWS OF AN AGITATOR 

Though the little town of Westport is almost at the 
extreme western part of Ireland, a leisurely train made the 
journey from Dublin in about seven hours. This is to be 
the starting point for a personal investigation of the land 
problem, which, it is hoped, will result in presenting a clear 
picture of the conditions which exist to-day because of cen- 
turies of misgovernment. 

The primary object in coming here was to see William 
O'Brien, M. P., whose name is written near the top of that 
long roll of Irish "rebels." What manner of man was I to 
find in this terrible agitator? Would I see himi fashioning 
bombs in a secret laboratory, or issuing manifestoes of vio- 
lence against the patient English government? Would he 
denounce the royal family and Dublin Castle and hiss threats 
of bloody revolution? 

A two-mile drive on a jaunting car through the cold 
winter twilight brought me to the home of the famous 
leader. It is on the shore of Westport Bay, with its dotted 
islets. Six or eight miles away rises the rugged cone of 
Croagh Patrick, whence the Saint, with bell and voice, is 
said to have driven the serpents into the sea. A roomy 
cottage, one story, covered with green vines and set in a 
pretty garden; inside, big, comfortable rooms; the library 
table littered with papers, the walls lined with books; dainty 
ornaments, fine pictures, a blazing fire of peat; a bearded 
man, whose eyes twinkled through thick glasses, and whose 
air suggested the student and not the leader — this was the 
home of the agitator and the man himself. 

*This chapter was written in Westport, County Mayo, in Decem- 
ber, 1902. Mr. O'Brien withdrew in 1908 from active association with 
the leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party, because of differences 
upon details of policy, but his sympathy with the Irish cause and his 
knowledge of Irish affairs have never been questioned. 

29 



30 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

We talked for nearly two hours. I shall try to sum- 
marize Mr. O'Brien's statements, which have a vital bearing 
upon the central question of the land. 

"As you are already aware," he said, "the only solution 
of the problem is to restore the land to the people from 
whose ancestors it was taken by force and fraud, and the 
restoration is to be made by purchase, which will do ample 
justice to the present owners. 

"But nature and the operation of the laws have divided 
the problem into two parts. In the east, where the land is 
rich, the only thing necessary is to arrange that the tenants 
may purchase their holdings, which in most cases are suffi- 
cient to support them. But in the west the problem is 
entirely different and entirely distinct. Here we have what 
are known as congested districts. The population is not 
excessive — indeed, it is only a fraction of what the land can. 
support — but it is congested in districts where the land is so 
poor that the life of the people is nothing less than long- 
drawn-out misery. 

"In a single sentence, the condition is this — where there 
is plenty of good land, there are no people; where there is no 
land but bog and rocky mountain side, there the people are 
huddled in poverty and destitution. These congested dis- 
tricts comprise a large part of Galway, Mayo and Donegal, 
with portions of Leitrim, Sligo, Roscommon, Clare, Lim- 
erick, Kerry and Cork counties. 

"As you travel through the country, as you say you are 
going to do, you will observe personally the frightful condi- 
tions that prevail. But it is officially described in eloquent 
terms. These unhappy districts for the last eleven years 
have been under the charge of the Congested Districts 
Board, a body created under the Purchase of Land Act of 
1891. 

"Under that act a congested district is one where more 
than twenty per cent, of the population live in electoral divi- 
sions, of which the total ratable value, divided by the popu- 
lation, gives a sum of less than thirty shillings for each 
person; in plainer terms, where the yearly rental of the 
property upon which the people live is less than $7.50 for 
each person. 



VIEWS OF AN AGITATOR 31 

"The districts altogether comprise more than 3,500,000 
acres, and the basis of taxation amounts to about $5 for each 
person. Here are half a million people, therefore, who are 
rated as possessing property worth only $5 a year each. 
That gives a faint idea of how close they are to destitution, 
even in the best of seasons. 

"Now, I must emphasize the fact that the trouble is not 
due to over-population. On the contrary, famine, persecu- 
tion and emigration have drained the country of millions 
who ought to be here. There are millions of acres of land 
fit for rich crops, but from these the people are shut out and 
are herded on miserable patches which barely keep them 
from starvation. The task is to redistribute the population, 
to acquire the rich lands from the present owners and divide 
them up among the suffering people. In a word, we must 
recolonize practically the whole of the western part of Ire- 
land. After centuries of so-called civilized government, we 
must begin afresh, as though this were a new country. 

"Since you have studied the question somewhat, I do 
not need to tell you that the pitiable conditions now existing 
jure not due to lack of thrift or endeavor on the part of the 
people. You know the history of the wars and confiscations 
and the outrageous system of land tenure, which combined 
to make the people the absolute slaves of the landlords. It 
was during and after the famine years of 1846-47 that the 
great "clearing out" was accomplished. The land stricken 
by loss of crops and the people weakened by hunger and dis- 
ease, they were wholly powerless against the savagery of the 
land laws and the brutality of some of the landlords. By 
countless thousands they were driven from their farms. In 
many cases there was the excuse that the tenanti could not 
pay rent. In many more, families which did not owe a 
shilling of arrears were turned out with the rest. 

"At that time, you remember, and until 1881, the land- 
lord could dispossess the tenant at will and seize the houses 
and other improvements which the tenant had made by years 
of labor. Under these cruel laws, then, whole districts were 
depopulated, and the unfortunate people had to start afresh. 

"Where could they go? Nearly every acre of good 
land was held by the landlords, and these refused to rent. 



32 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

Tired of the constant struggle of the tenants against injus- 
tice, the owners let their great domains to big grazers. In 
your tours you will see miles upon miles of the best land in 
Ireland, once the homes of thousands of people, now given 
over to cattle and sheep. 

"And where did the people go? You will find them, 
too. You will find them in the bogs, on the waste land; 
their miserable hovels clinging to the hillsides, where their 
poor little crops try to struggle up through rocks and stones. 
Driven there by remorseless laws, with rich land all about 
them, they toil in the barrens, fighting desperately against 
starvation — and still paying rent. 

''You will see with your own eyes how poor these 
people are. But let me tell you one thing — and you will find 
this in official reports : The people actually would starve if 
they depended upon the miserable patches for which they 
pay exorbitant rents. 

"They are supported and kept alive by remittances 
from their relatives in America and England. 

"This will seem incredible to you when I say that it 
applies, not to a family here and there, or to scattered locali- 
ties, but to thousands upon thousands of families, to nearly 
half a million souls. Every year there is a huge migration 
to England and Scotland. By thousands the strongest go to 
work on the farms during the summer and harvest in order 
to earn a few pounds which shall keep them and their 
families alive during the winter and meet the demands of 
the landlords for rent. The men go, the youths go, the 
boys go, the girls as young as fifteen and sixteen go, some for 
three months, some for six or eight months in each year. 

"Leaving one or two of each family — usually the 
mother and younger children — to care for the cabin and 
potato patch and the pig, they travel to England and Scotland, 
and there tramip from farm to farm, working from dawn to 
dusk and sleeping in outhouses, so that they may earn the 
price of food and rent for the winter. Even this terrible 
sacrifice is not enough, and thousands are kept from dying 
of hunger only by the money sent from relatives in America. 

"This is the problem of the West, the most pressing 
problem which confronts us, for it is a problem of life and 




A RELIC OF EVICTION DAY 




TO BE REPLACED BY A DECENT HOME. 



VIEWS OF AN AGITATOR 33 

death. It Is not new. It has been with us for fifty years. 
But while death and emigration have decimated the people, 
the English government has been blind and deaf. At last 
we see hope ahead." 

"What is the plan of relief?" I asked. 

"There is only one solution," answered Mr. O'Brien, 
^landlordism must be abolished. The people must be res- 
cued from the bogs and barrens and placed on good lands. 
All they need is a chance. Give them a decent patch of good 
land and they will become self-supporting rapidly." 

"And how can this transfer be effected with justice to 
the landlords and justice to the tenants?" 

"The only possible method is purchase by the govern- 
ment for the people, with easy terms of repayment. Both 
landlords and tenants are heartily sick of the present system. 

"Gladstone's Act of 1881 was a magnificent advance for 
us, but its workings have not been satisfactory. It estab- 
lished a land commission, which fixes so-called fair rents for 
periods of fifteen years. The rents, where applications have 
been made, have been greatly reduced, which does not please 
the landlords. But the members of the commission have no 
practical knowledge of land values, hence most of their judg- 
ments are unfair to the tenants. 

"Besides, in the congested districts the vital question is 
not to reduce the rents, but to let the people have lands which 
are capable of yielding life-sustaining crops. There are 
thousands of 'farms' which are so wretched that, even if the 
tenants had them rent free, they could not raise enough on 
them to feed their families. The good lands must be pur- 
chased and divided up among the people. They will then 
work out their own salvation. 

"Roughly speaking, the plan is for the government to 
buy out the landlords by a certain number of yearly pay- 
ments and resell to the tenants in instalments which shall 
amount to a just rental, and which will liquidate the purchase 
in a certain number of years. 

"The difficulty, of course, is to bridge over the differ- 
ence between what the landlord is willing to accept and what 
the tenant is able to pay. This suggestion is made : Under 
the various purchase acts, the average term of purchase 



s 



34 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

would be eighteen years. Suppose that on the basis of pres- 
ent rents the landlords should get payments for twenty years, 
while the tenant should be expected to pay for only sixteen 
years. Then let the government assume the payments for 
the other four years. 

"But, you say, how can this immense burden be placed 
upon the innocent English taxpayer? No such thing is con- 
templated. Ireland will pay the whole bill. Let there be 
an equitable redistribution of expenses, and she will not need 
to ask for a penny of English money. 

"For instance, take the police, the Royal Irish Constabu- 
lary. This great force, numbering 13,000 men, is controlled 
absolutely from London, is paid for by the Irish people and 
Is kept up solely to help the landlords in their struggle 
against the tenants. Once settle the land question, and the 
need for this great standing army disappears. Let the 
people have good lands, fit to support life, and all cause for 
agitation disappears. ^ 

* "There will be no more organizations against land- 
lords, no more campaigns against paying rent, for then the 
rent will be purchase money, and no more outbursts of vio- 
lence. The people will be busy tilling their land and paying 
for it. Once give them a chance to support themselves and 
Ireland will have a peace such as she has not known for 
generations. 

"Land purchase, of course, has been going on for years, 
but the process is desperately slow. The Congested Districts 
Board is empowered to negotiate with landlords willing to 
sell ; but the result, while it proves the solution of the prob- 
lem, has affected only a few of the immense number of 
sufferers. 

"Therefore, to solve the problem completely and finally, 
the purchase must be universal, and the misery of a half 
million people pleads that it should be immediate. Com- 
pulsion, I believe, is the only adequate plan. Action must be 
taken wholesale, and at once, if we are to relieve the suffer- 
ings of Ireland and stop the frightful drain of emigration. 

"In this province of Connaught there are more than 
2,000,000 acres of rich land, on which you will find only 
cattle, sheep and a few herdsmen. Let down the bars of 



VIEWS OF AN AGITATOR 35 

law and prejudice, let the people buy back the lands from 
which they were driven, and there will be provided a country 
capable of supporting in comfort twice the population which 
now drags out a miserable existence." 

I have given, I believe, a correct statement of Mr. 
O'Brien's views as he gave them to me, although I do not 
assert that the words are precisely his own. 

Upon taking leave of him at the door of his hospitable 
home I could not help wondering that this mild-spoken, 
studious man, whose every word seemed to ring with com- 
mon sense and sympathy, has been treated as a dangerous 
character, a seditionist and an enemy to the state, and that 
he had spent dreary months in prison, treated as a male- 
factor, because of the fight he has waged for justice for the 
Irish people. 

Perhaps, as they study his statement, readers will won- 
der the same thing. 

Having traced the history of the land laws under which. 
Ireland has suffered, and having noted the views of one of 
the political leaders, it will be useful to check the statements 
made with official records. Before leaving this district, 
therefore, I have talked at length with members of the West- 
port District Council (the local government body), and have 
examined a report made by their special committee which 
investigated a few weeks ago the condition of the people. 
To those who would turn wearily from the survey of figures, 
I would say only this : The figures deal with human beings. 
They are elements in an equation of life and death. They 
do not deal with mathematics, but with men and women and 
children. 

The district of Westport has a population of 37,381 
and a (yearly) valuation of $219,805, or a little more than 
$5 for each person. Its area is 347,819 acres, enough to 
give each individual nearly ten acres, or each family fifty 
acres. There is, therefore, no scarcity of land. But what 
is the actual distribution? 

There are 5322 occupiers of land. Of these, 3041 are 
rated under $20 and 4089 in all under $40. Of the remain- 
der, at least 500 are barely outside the limit of extreme 



36 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

poverty. But the most frightful truth is that 4089 occu- 
piers, and that means 20,000 persons, are crowded on to 
holdings which by no stretch of imagination can be consid- 
ered capable of sustaining life in their bodies. With bound- 
less, rolling plains of rich lands stretching on every side of 
them ; possessing health and strength and inspired with a 
pathetic eagerness to work, these 20,000 men and women 
and children are herded in the barrens, where they would 
actually die of hunger were it not for the assistance sent to 
them by those who have been able to emigrate to America. 
And this condition is not one peculiar to a season of famine. 
It exists year after year, from generation to generation; one 
unending, heartbreaking struggle with hunger. I quote the 
official report : 

"The inhabitants are only preserved from year to year 
from perishing of famine by the earnings of the adult male 
population in their annual migration to England and Scot- 
land and by the remittances of their relatives in America. 
Two special trains per week carry emigrants to Queenstown 
for America, these being almost exclusively young men and 
women from fifteen to thirty-five years old, in the flower of 
their age and strength. 

"From Westport alone there left in the season of 1901 
4178 harvesters for England and Scotland. The total emi- 
gration from the county since 1851 has been 164,589. 
From this district alone 30,000 have gone — nearly as many 
as the present population." 

Nearly 350,000 acres of land, yet even the remnant of 
population left by famine and emigration is drained from 
year to year, simply because the unhappy people cannot find 
places to live. Even though these are but figures, could any- 
thing picture more vividly the monstrous conditions under 
which these peasants are condemned to suffer? 

And the annual mligration to England and Scotland, 
eloquent as it is of insupportable conditions, has a distinct 
and grievous effect upon the difficulties of existence. The 
little farms are deprived of the work and care of the men 
and boys. Proper methods of cultivation are impossible; 
the land, poor, at best, suffers neglect, and outraged nature 
takes revenge. There is no rotation of crops. Year after 



VIEWS OF AN AGITATOR 37 

year the worn-out soil is called upon to yield the staple food, 
potatoes. As a result, the crops grow steadily less. In Eng- 
land the carefully tended soil will produce more than six 
tons of potatoes to the acre. In Westport district the yield 
has fallen below three tons an acre. Here is a striking pic- 
ture of human wretchedness, as officially reported: 

"The normal conditions of life of 20,000 of the popu- 
lation of this district are : Their holdings are too small and 
too exhausted to support life, the soil yearly becoming more 
unfit for cultivation; three- fourths of the adult male popula- 
tion are banished from their families and country for half 
the year in search of the hardest and most poorly recom- 
pensed labor, and there is a constant danger that the ordi- 
nary privations of every winter will be turned into actual and 
general famine by a few weeks' unfavorable weather, by a 
falling off in the English labor market or by any serious 
depression of American trade which may cut off their rela- 
tives' power of relieving therm." 

Is there a country on the face of the globe where white 
people make their homes in which conditions of such dismal 
poverty can be found? True, this is the official story of only 
one district, but the report says, and I have proved the state- 
ment by personal observation of hundreds of miles of terri- 
tory, that the same story may be told of every district in the 
West. The land decaying, the people dying or expatriating 
themselves, privation and hunger their constant companions, 
famine an ever-present specter — this is civilization within a 
day's journey of the world's greatest capital. 

Now, what is the cause of this unnatural condition? 
We have shown that it is lack of land. The people have 
been tortured by land hunger for generations. Yet all 
around them lie boundless fields which ache for cultivation, 
which actually are lapsing back to barrens because they do 
not feel the plow. There are in County Mayo 1,327,000 
acres. Excluding towns, water area and those parts which 
are absolutely barren, this is the proportion : 

Growing cereals and green crops, 93,681 acres; pastur- 
ing cattle and sheep, 644,463 acres. 

The people starve on one-seventh of the land, and that 
the meanest to be found; the cattle grow fat on the other 



38 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

six-sevenths, which is degenerating year by year into wild 
meadow land. 

Take the Westport district. It comprises 347,819 
acres. Of this area, only 15,000 acres are available to raise 
food for the people. Who holds the rest of the land? The 
occupiers may be divided into two classes — those men or 
their descendants who drove the people from their farms by 
eviction, and grazers who pasture their cattle where there 
were once comfortable homies and fields. To use figures 
again, 52,000 acres are held by thirteen landlords and 
98,000 acres by sixty-six grazers. It will be interesting to 
note where some of these persons live. Among the grazers 
are A. H. Boswell, London, 24,763 acres; Captain Lapri- 
mandaye, London, 10,064 acres; Colonel Clive, London, 
15,968 acres; trustees of Achill Mission, 10,000 acres. 
And among the landlords we find the Marquis of Sligo, 
27,402 acres; W. C. Kennedy, London, 3439 acres, and the 
Rev. W. C. Bellingham, London, 8955 acres. Of the sixty- 
six grazers, only five reside in the district. 

To clinch the injustice of the land distribution, it is only 
necessary to add that most of the land now used for pastur- 
ing the cattle of landlords and capitalists was reclaimed by 
the arduous toil of the people who were evicted from it. 

The least consideration will show, therefore, that the 
only remedy for this cruel system of injustice is to place the 
people back on the land taken from them. Nature herself 
is proclaiming the necessity for this. When the landlords 
and the money lenders who acquired incumbered estates 
drove the people forth from their holdings they were 
inspired by the same fever for consolidation which we 
observe now in industrial circles. They were tired of the 
never-ending pleas and protests of their tenants about exces- 
sive rents and the seizure of improvements. Some of them* 
sought to conduct their immense holdings as consolidated 
farms, but the greater number turned them into pasture 
land and rented them to grazers. Both schemes during 
recent years have proved to be commercial failures as well 
as cruelly unjust. The degeneracy of the land and the com- 
petition of American cattle have conspired to reduce the 
profits of grazing almost to the vanishing point. The land 



VIEWS OF AN AGITATOR 39 

cries out for cultivation, and the starving people, imprisoned 
on their barren patches, are living arguments that the cry 
should be heard. 

It begins to be seen now that the recolonization of the 
West of Ireland offers the only refuge from the intolerable 
conditions prevailing. There must be wholesale migration 
of families' from the congested districts to the fertile lands. 
The population, instead of being confined to the poorest 
lands, must be spread over the immense arable territory, 
which is ready to yield generous crops. 

Purchase from the landlords is, of course, the only 
means of accomplishing this. Under various acts of Parlia- 
ment purchase has been authorized, and the Congested Dis- 
tricts Board is empowered to negotiate with landlords willing 
to sell. But the result so far, while it amply justifies the 
procedure, has been trifling in extent. There remains only 
the complete abolition of landlordism by a scheme of pur- 
chase which shall be compulsory or of a nature so attractive 
that it will be universally accepted by the landlords. 



VI 
*LIFE UNDER LANDLORDISM 

It is a gray day in Kiltimagh. The clouds lie close 
down over the green-gray land, and the short winter sun 
makes little more than twilight at noon. But it is a fair day, 
toe, and as the jaunting car passes down the main street of 
the village the pony has to push his way through a jostling 
mass of cattle and sheep and pigs and tiny donkeys and lusty 
peasant folk. They are all jumbled together in the muddy 
street, buyers and sellers and sold, with the old, gray Houses 
and shops on either side, with the clamor of chaffering and 
the reek of the byres ascending ceaselessly, and the cold, 
damp wind of winter whistling through it all. 

My source of information here was not to be the polit- 
ical leader, or even the official report, but the people them- 
selves. I was to visit them in their homes, see their little 
farms, observe with my own eyes how they exist under the 
system which has burdened them for a hundred years and 
more. My guide was to be the Rev. Denis O'Hara, parish 
priest, who is the intellect of the poor little community. I 
found him in the plain, gray parish house, beside the stately 
church, which looks so strangely magnificent amid the poverty 
of the village and the cruel desolation of the surrounding 
country. He greeted me with kindly courtesy and my mis- 
sion with heartfelt enthusiasm. 

"It is not often," he said, "that I can welcome a visitor 
from America. Yet this little town is closely bound to your 
far-away country. There is not a famrly in the parish which 
has not a member in America, and more go every year." 

Father O'Hara has the care of 4500 men and women 
and children, and his days are fully occupied, yet he con- 
sented cheerfully to guide me through his parish. 

"I have been fighting for my people for twenty-three 

*Chapters VI and VII were written in Kiltimagh, County Mayo, 
in December, 1902. 

40 



LIFE UNDER LANDLORDISM 41 

years," he said, "and it would be strange if I could not spare 
a few hours to show you their homes, when the object is to 
tell the people of America how grievously they suffer." 

So we climbed on the jaunting car, wrapped ourselves 
in rugs against the bitter wind and drove through the 
crowded fair out into the open country, the white-haired 
priest explaining as we went. The land itself was poverty 
made manifest. On the higher parts it was divided into 
little patches, separated by walls of loose stones. The soil, 
'though men and women had spent years of toil upon it, was 
still sown with stones, through which the sparse grass or 
crops had to fight their way. In the hollows lay hundreds 
upon hundreds of acres of bog, covered with the coarse, 
brown heather and scarred here and there with ditches, 
where the people cut the turf they use for fuel. 

"All these, as you see," said Father O'Hara, "are bad 
lands, utterly incapable of supporting life decently. The 
families whose poor cabins you see here and there were 
evicted years ago from the rich lands which lie round about. 
Some of them could not pay the excessive rents imposed by 
the landlords; some of them were turned out simply because 
the owners preferred to let the lands to grazers. The result 
was the same in both cases. The people, whose labor had 
reclaimed the lands and made them fit to grow crops, were 
driven out. They had to go somewhere. All could not 
raise the money to emigrate, although thousands did. Those 
who remained had to beg permission to make new homes 
here, on these hillside patches of stony ground and down in 
the bogs yonder." 

"But how do they support themselves from such 
wretched land as this?" 

"Ah, they do not. That would be quite impossible. 
Two acres or three acres or four acres, as the holdings run, 
how could a family raise enough for food and clothing and 
rent from such miserable holdings? No, they live by migra- 
tion and emigration. The farms, if you may call them such, 
average four acres, and the rents $15. Set aside the rent 
altogether, give them this land absolutely rent free, and it is 
the solemn truth that they could not raise enough food to 
keep them from starving. Every year the men and boys and* 



42 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

girls, the strongest in each family, go to England and Scot- 
land and work as farm hands. They are able to send home a 
few shillings at a time, and return in the early winter with the 
rest of their savings. Most of them cannot pull through the 
hard season even by this cruel sacrifice, but have to depend 
upon money sent to them by the faithful, loving sons and 
daughters who have gone to America." 

The car was stopped on the brow of a hill, and Father 
O'Hara swept his hand over the little valley that lay before 
us. ) 

"There is the land," he said simply. Down below was 
the silent, desolate bog, useless for any cultivation worthy 
of the name, but filled with the precious peat, which seems 
to be the only gift of Providence to the unhappy people. 
On the slopes of the hills were the farms, tiny patches criss- 
crossed with the interminable walls of loose stones, and here 
and there a little whitewashed dwelling, with thatched roof, 
blackened by smoke and weather, and a rude cowshed against 
it, the very door of the house half hidden by accumulated 
piles of stable refuse. 

"What an immense amlount of labor has been wasted 
on these stone walls !" I suggested. 

"Wasted?" echoed Father O'Hara, with a grim laugh. 
"Every stone in those walls was picked by hand from the 
ground. The plots they inclose were once nearly covered 
with the stones. An English journalist came here not long 
ago and wrote his impressions for a great London paper, a 
paper which has little sympathy for the Irish. I showed 
him these lands. Do you know what he wrote for English- 
men to read? This: 

" 'When a man begins to cultivate a patch in the Swin- 
ford district of County Mayo, the first three crops he gets 
consist of stones.' 

•»"> "It's true; it's bitterly true. Driven from the lands 
which they and their fathers had occupied, these people have 
been herded where they had to take the rocky soil and make 
their farms with their bare hands. The stones range in size 
from the size of your fist to that half-ton boulder in the 
corner of the field yonder, which had to be pried loose with 
a crowbar and hauled out with ropes. Three crops of stones 



LIFE UNDER LANDLORDISM 43 

. — that is what the settlers here have to face. And even with 
their utmost endeavor, after years of the most heartbreaking 
toil, the result is hardly better. The land cannot feed them." 

So these folk have to make the land with their hands 
before they can till it. And the walls are built because there 
is nowhere else to put the stones. One man, I noticed, had 
erected a four- foot wall around his half-acre patch. That 
was not enough, so he heaped up other tons and tons into a 
great mound over in one corner. He had buried his 
strength, perhaps his life, beneath that monstrous hill of 
labor. But what a monument it was to the manhood which 
would not be crushed! ^ 

A mile or two farther on we got down from the car 
and climbed a lane running up a hillside. That path was 
like the dry bed of a mountain stream. It was the land as 
it was uncleared of stones. At the summit a half dozen 
sickly trees stood bent to the wind amid a cluster of thatched 
hovels. I had thought it was a collection of cattle sheds. 
But it was a village. Or rather, it was both. Scattered 
along the brow of the hill were twenty or thirty of these 
wretched buildings, whitewashed, thatched, with less than 
one window apiece — the customary dwellings of the poorest 
peasants. There were no streets, for the houses — let us call 
them such — were set down in confusion. Where streets 
might have been there were rank pools of water where 
geese nuzzled in the slime, and paths of half-frozen mud 
and filth that wound around and through and over heaped- 
up piles of manure. The rough bricks of peat, gathered for 
the winter's fuel, lay in pyramid piles against the house 
walls. 

The abject hideousness of the place got on my nerves 
as I splashed through the mud after the priest. The gray 
clouds had sunk closer to the desolate land and a searching 
rain was driven by the biting wind. I thought of the Polish 
mining settlements I have seen in Pennsylvania. The pic- 
tures I called up only made this scene more miserable. 
"Come," said the priest. We had to stoop to enter a door- 
way and then had to stand aside to admit a little of the gray 
light. I could see nothing at first, but there was life some- 
^where in the darkness. €■ 



•44 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

"Good day to you, Father." It was a woman's voice, 
and she came forward toward the patch of dim light at the 
door. An old woman, bent and wrinkled. Her feet were 
bare on the earthen floor and purple with the bitter cold. 

"Well, now. Ellen, and how are you?" 

"Badly, Father." 

"And this is Kate, eh?" Somewhere from the darkness 
appeared a girl with brown hair and blue eyes. Her thin 
dress fluttered in the wind that whistled in at the open door. 
Her feet and legs were naked to the knees, but she did not 
shiver. Her face turned as red as her rough hands as she 
whispered a greeting to the priest and hung her head. 

"Eh, what a fine girl we're getting to be! Have you 
been down to the convent school? What? 'No, Father.' 
And why not? Speak up, child. What do you say? Well 
i — of course. But we'll try to get some clothes for you. 
Sure, you must go to school. You'll learn to read and write 
■ — and you should see the lace the other girls are m'aking 
yonder." 

"Look about you," whispered the priest to me. 

Gradually the vision penetrated the gloom, and I could 
see through the whole — house. It was one room, perhaps 
eighteen feet by twelve. At one end was the chimney, with 
the open hearth on the floor, where a few blocks of turf 
smoldered. In one corner were a rude bench and table. In 
another a raised structure which I could not name. It 
seemed to be heaped with straw and rags — 

"The bed," whispered the priest. 

In the center the smoke-blackened thatch hung seven or 
eight feet clear of the floor. Where it rested on the walls it 
was less than five feet clear. I glanced around toward that 
part of the room to which my back had been turned. I had 
thought I heard some one moving. The gloom was more 
dense there. But I could see a heap of straw on the floor, 
and it moved, with grunts. A pig wallowed beside a 
trough. This was ten feet from the bed. Just beyond was 
a partition which did not reach to the roof. I stepped over 
and glanced within. It was a cow stalled, with a doorway 
leading outward to a pile of stable refuse. The cow was 
fifteen feet from the bed. 



LIFE UNDER LANDLORDISM 45 

"And where is the man, Ellen, and your sons ?" 

"In England, Father. They're still working there." 

"Ah, well, they'll be home soon, I suppose, for the 
winter?" 

"They will, Father. Thank God." 

I went outside, leaving the woman thanking God. 

We went to other houses. Some were a little better. 
Some, believe me, were worse. One other I will speak of, 
because the inmates were the same, a mother and a young 
daughter. The priest spoke to them heartily. 

"Come, now," he said, "what have we had for dinner 
to-day?" The woman pointed to a tin dish containing the 
remnants of a few little potatoes. "And the half of a 
ha'p'nny herring," she added," without the slightest emotion. 

"For the two of you?" 

"Ay, Father." 

"And what's for supper, come now?" The woman 
threw her hand again at the little mess of cold potatoes in 
the tin dish. I saw a dark fragment of something in it. 

"Yes, that, too. That's the other half of the herring," 
Said the woman, simply. As we went away I found myself 
trying to* divide one cent's worth of fish among two persons 
for two' meals. There's a problem in fractions, with only 
one answer — hunger. We stumbled down the rocky lane 
again — it was after three o'clock in the afternoon and nearly 
dark — and drove on with the car. We visited other settle- 
ments — Cleragh, Carrick, Culthasney, and seme which I 
cannot recall — but the tale was only retold. I have 
described, I confess, such scenes as were nearly the worst. 
But seldom did I see a place which in America or England 
would be considered a fit habitation for human beings. If 
all the lands and villages through which I passed, buildings 
and all, were offered to a Pennsylvania farmer in exchange 
for ten acres of his worst land he would laugh the gift to 
scorn. Yet each little patch of stony ground, with its 
wretched cabin, built by the hands of the tenants, costs them 
from $15 to $20 a year. And they have to go away to earn 
that. Meanwhile, there are families in England whose rent- 
rolls — than which there can be no better badge of respecta- 
bility — are swelled by these very payments. 



46 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

It will be the easiest thing in the world for the reader 
to say that the wretchedness I have touched upon is due to 
laziness or ignorance or lack of ordinary thrift. But that 
would be both false and foolish. I repeat, at the risk of 
wearying insistence, that these people live on the stony, 
barren land because there is nowhere else for them to live. 
They, or their fathers, reclaimed land at the cost of years of 
labor and builded them homes upon it. Then, by the simple 
operation of remorseless statutes, they were turned out, their 
houses taken from them, the work of their hands seized by 
their masters, the landlords. Therefore they are where they 
are. 

But why the wretched homes? Why the housing of 
human beings and animals together? Such things have fol- 
lowed inevitably. The land defeating their best efforts to 
make it produce enough food, ground down by the bitterest 
poverty, they have found it physically impossible to raise 
themselves. Any other race would have sunk into unimag- 
ined depths of degradation. These Irish peasants are still 
healthy, moral, hopeful human beings. They need but a 
touch of human help to become sturdily prosperous. I know 
this, for I have seen it. Father O'Hara, as I have not stated 
before, is a member of the Congested Districts Board, that 
powerful agency of amelioration, which is headed by the 
Chief Secretary for Ireland. As we drove along he showed 
me some things that have been done. 

"As you know," he said, "in some districts we have 
been able to acquire good lands and sell it in homesteads to 
the tenants who have been occupying barren lands. In this 
immediate vicinity, unfortunately, there is none available. 
The only remedy is to transfer some of the population 
into better neighborhoods. But meanwhile we have done 
much to raise the people up, to encourage them. We help 
to drain farms that need it, and reward those who help 
themselves. There is one of our houses yonder." 

He pointed out a neat farmhouse of stone, with small 
glass windows, a stone chimney and a slate roof. 

"That family," he said, "formerly lived in such a 
hovel as those you have seen to-day. We were able to add 
a little land to the patch they had. Then we built the house. 



LIFE UNDER LANDLORDISM 47 

The family pay less now than they did for rent to the 
landlord, yet in time they will own house and ground. The 
board bought the property, and is selling it on yearly 
payments. Of course, this work is slow, and it is restricted 
to the few districts where we have been able to acquire the 
land. It will never become wholly effective until the pur- 
chase of all landlords' holdings is accomplished." 

We visited several of the homes where the work of 
encouragement showed its effects. In one I found a house 
with four rooms, comfortably furnished. The living-room 
floor was of stone, well scrubbed. There was a dresser, 
filled with dishes. The dooryard was clean swept. 

"Until we came to their assistance," said Father 
O'Hara, as we left the place, "this family lived in what is 
now the stable. The cow and- pig had part of the same 
building, and the refuse was simply flung out of the door 
until it piled up so that one entering had to walk around it. 
The board adopted a plan of offering money to thrifty men 
who would agree to improve their holdings. We gave that 
man $50. He did $200 worth of work — and the result you 
see." 

The country is in the Swinford district. The popula- 
tion is 44,162. The annual ratable valuation is $4.54 for 
each person. Of the 7700 holdings of land, 4768 are worth 
less than $20 and 7095 in all less than $40. The latter 
valuation, it is agreed, represents an amount under which 
subsistence is impossible. There are, therefore, in this little 
district 35,000 persons who are confined to patches of land 
which cannot support life in them. At the same time, thirty- 
nine grazers and fourteen landlords occupy land valued at 
$19,210 a year — as much, in proportion, as 4200 tenants, at 
the average valuation. 

Of the 164,589 persons who emigrated from County 
Mayo in the fifty years following 1851, Swinford district 
lost more than 40,000. And the drain goes on. In 188 1 
the population was 53,714. In 1901 it was 44,162, a loss 
of 1 8 per cent, in twenty years. 

After all, is there any wonder that statesmen have been 
laboring with this Irish question for thirty years ? 



VII 

A MAN WHO KNOWS 

It seems to me that I should not leave the story of Kilti- 
magh without some word of Father Denis O'Hara, himself 
and his work. He is a man to study. With the ability of a 
statesman and the intellect of a scholar, he is content to be 
a parish priest in a patch of populous desolation. In his 
devotion to painful good works he may be taken as typical 
of the rural clergy in this country. For his peculiar gifts 
and opportunities as a public administrator he commands 
more than desultory attention. 

It was with a heart aching for the miseries I had seen 
that I sat down in the homely little study of the priest, while 
he devoted a necessary hour to those who had been waiting 
patiently to see him. It was a quaint, quiet little room. 
Though the hour was less than five o'clock, the winter night 
had already fallen, and the walls were lighted only by the 
wavering flames of the turf fire. The furniture was aus- 
terely plain and worn with long use. There was a small 
writing desk, covered with a confusion of papers. The 
roomy old bookcase was filled with much-handled volumes — 
works of devotion, poetry, history, philosophy, in English, 
Irish and Latin. A man of the highest scholarship, with 
talents which might have won him ease, he had spent fifteen 
years in this wilderness of poverty, ministering to the help- 
less. I need not say that such devotion and sacrifice are not 
peculiar to followers of this man's religion, for in every 
country there are thousands of ministers who count the world 
well lost if they may serve humbly and with little material 
reward. I write of Father O'Hara as an example of them 
all. 

I thought of him as he appeared while we passed through 
the crowded village fair and along the country lanes and 
into the houses of the poor. I began to realize then what 
power lies in the hands of the parish priest. He has grown 

48 




A REMNANT OF LANDLORDISM. 




VILLAGE OF LOUGH GLYNN. 



A MAN WHO KNOWS 49 

so into the lives of the people that he is a part of their very 
existence. The)- look to him not only as a spiritual authority, 
but as a friend, a counselor, a judge, an advocate, a father, 
indeed. He is more mighty to prevail with them than the 
imperial government, yet finds time to act as arbiter in neigh- 
bors' disputes, and from his decision there is no thought of 
appeal. By tradition and practice the people of his parish 
have delegated to him the powers of king and court, and he 
distributes justice in matters large and small with an open 
hand. I thought of him then as I saw him among the 
people. In the crowded fair and along the country roads 
every man and boy touched his hat as the priest passed. 
The women and girls bent their knees. Not one who met 
his eye failed of a word of greeting. 

"Good day to you, Martin. How is the wife? That's 
well. A fine evening, Pat. * * * Dan, my boy, a 
word with you. Keep clear of the public house to-night. 
It's no place for you. * * * Ah, Mary, I'm glad to 
see you out again. Where are the girls? They're well? 
I'm glad of that, now." 

There were perhaps five hundred men and women and 
children in the village street, and they had come from miles 
around to the fair. I think Father O'Hara spoke to fifty of 
them by name. He could have so called each one. There 
are 4500 persons in his parish, and he knows them all as a 
man knows his neighbors. Far out on a lonely road, miles 
from Kiltimagh, we were jogging along on our jaunting car. 
Coming toward us up a steep hill I saw an old, old woman. 
Under her rough, short skirt I could see her feet, bare on 
the icy ground. She was bent almost double, for on her 
back was tied a huge basket filled with half-frozen blocks of 
turf from the bog. It must 'have weighed nearly forty 
pounds. Slowly, painfully she toiled up the hill. At first 
she saw only the stranger on the car. but as she passed she 
nodded gravely. Then the priest cried out a cheery greet- 
ing, calling her by name. Instantly her face broke into 
smiles, and as the car stopped a moment she looked up into 
the kindly face above her with a gaze that was almost wor- 
ship. A few cheerful words, and we passed on. I looked 
back at the old woman. She was plodding on up the hill 



50 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

But her step was freer, and I think the heavy burden on her 
back had grown lighter. 

Across his hospitable dinner table Father O'Hara and 
I talked long of what we had seen that day and what we 
had not seen. It was all the cruel story of the land. Kilti- 
magh is in the Swinford union, or district, concerning which 
I have already given some figures. To get nearer home, 
there are in Kiltimagh electoral division 309 occupiers of 
land, whose holdings are valued at less than $40 a year — 
that is, there are 309 families confined on land which cannot 
possibly yield enough food to keep them alive, let alone pay 
the rent of $5 or more per acre. And in the adjoining divi- 
sion of Ballinamore lands worth $3725 a year are occupied 
for pasturing cattle by one grazer and one landlord. Father 
O'Hara, who has been a leader in the fight for justice since 
the Land League agitation of 1879, knows the story as he 
knows his breviary. 

"You have seen some O'f the results of the inequitable 
land system to-day," he said, "and the cause is plain. I'll 
give you an example. Comprising parts of this and other 
unions there is a great property called the Dillon estate, 
owned until a few years ago by Lord Dillon and before 
him by his ancestors. There are 93,000 acres in this one 
estate. Now listen. Arthur Young, the famous English 
traveler and writer, visited this district one hundred years 
ago. He described the Dillon property, and said the annual- 
rental derived by the owner was $25,000. Mark you, now. 
Lord Dillon never visited his estate. He never turned his 
hand to improve it. He never erected a farm building or 
built a fence or dug a drain. He simply lived in England, 
while his agents and bailiffs collected the rents from the 
tenants here. And in 1879 the rent-roll amounted to $130,- 
000 a year. In eighty years the income of the landlord had 
increased to five times the original amount. 

"He had done absolutely nothing. The tenants had 
done everything. And as fast as they drained and reclaimed 
the land and built houses and fences, just as fast was the 
rent raised on them. They made the improvements and 
paid for them ; and when at any time, whether through crop 
failure or sickness or sheer inability to pay, the tenants could 



A MAN WHO KNOWS 51 

not meet the demands of the agents, they were evicted, other 
tenants replaced them at increased rents, and the profit of all 
their labor was seized by the landlord. It was by this sys- 
tem that the people have gradually been forced to take the 
miserable patches you saw to-day, while within a short dis- 
tance there are thousands of acres of good land devoted to 
cattle grazing. 

"I have mentioned the Dillon estate because it serves 
as an example of what can be done. The Congested Dis- 
tricts Board was able to arrange the purchase of this great 
tract in March, 1899. The price paid was $1,450,000. 
We have spent more than $100,000 for drainage, fencing, 
road-making, the improvement of houses and outbuildings, 
and will spend $40,000 more. What is the result? The 
land has gone back to the people. The thousands of tenants 
and their families are gradually being made owners of the 
farms they work. Hovels are disappearing, and stone 
houses with slate roofs are taking their place. The annual 
payments of the tenants amount to only two-thirds af what 
they paid for rent, yet in a term of years they will own the 
land absolutely. 

"You understand, of course, that this land was not 
bought by the government and presented to the people. 
They must pay for every acre of it. But the payments are 
so arranged as not to be burdensome, and before each thrifty 
tenant there is something to work for, the certainty that he 
or his children will eventually own his own little farm. The 
difference between that estate and those adjoining, which are 
still held by landlords, tells the whole story. A member of 
Parliament went among the Dillon estate tenants recently 
and asked them how they were doing. 

" 'Why, bless you, sir,' said one farmer, 'we're as happy 
as a choir of angels.' 

"And on the next adjoining estate you will find scores 
of holdings from which the unfortunate tenants have been 
evicted within the last six months; you will find those who 
remain paying 50 per cent, more for rent than these pay for 
purchase; and you will find those estates the very hotbed of 
agitation, with the police exercising the oppressive coercion 
laws to the extreme limit of severity. 



52 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

"This contrast is inevitable. It cannot be expected * 
tenants who see their neighbors treated with justice and 
humanity, while they themselves are still ground down and 
oppressed, will not be discontented. In this immediate 
vicinity, as 1 have said, there is no good land available. The 
Congested Districts Board is devoting its energies to enlarg- 
ing the small holdings where possible, assisting the most 
deserving tenants and encouraging improvement. But the 
only remedy for the whole intolerable system is the abolition 
of dual ownership of the land. Landlordism, as Ireland 
knows it, is an anachronism. The people who occupy the 
land, and farm it, and improve it, must be made the owners 
of it." 

"How about the political agency which is working for 
this reform?" I asked. "Are you in favor of the United 
Irish League?" 

"In favor of it?" cried Father O'Hara. "My dear 
man, I am heart and soul with it, and so is every good priest 
in Ireland, from the highest to the lowest. I tell my people 
so, too. I say to them : 'The United Irish League is light- 
ing for you. You must fight with it. The best way for you 
to fight is to give money, and you ought to do it because 
every one of you will benefit by its work. Before you pay 
your rent, before you buy your clothes, before you pay your 
priest, give your shilling to the United Irish League.' " 

Besides the devotion of the people, Father O'Hara has 
erected other monuments here. There is a great church, fit 
to grace any square in America, and a convent school, built 
of stone and heated with steam. This in a district where 
poverty is as inevitable as rent. 

"I have to thank America for these," he said. "The 
church cost $25,000 and the school half as much more, and 
most of it came from your country. Hundreds of young 
men and young women had to emigrate to America from 
here. I don't believe there are a score of families in the 
parish that have not relatives on the other side. I started 
that church with two half sovereigns. When I wrote over 
to our boys and girls in America the money poured in. Ah, 
they don't forget the old home, poor as it is." 

We went through the convent school during the day. 



A MAN WHO KNOWS 53 

Classes of girls from ten to sixteen years old were busily at 
work, under the tuition of black-robed Sisters. Here, as in 
the streets, Father O'Hara called each child by name, and had 
a word of adv r ice, or, more frequently, a joke, for each one 
of them. The girls receive an elementary education and are 
instructed in household work and lace-making. The Sisters 
also visit the houses in the parish, tend the sick and encour- 
age the mothers and daughters to keep their houses neat. 

"We teach housework and cooking," said Father 
O'Hara, "because it helps to raise the poor folks a little and 
also because many of the girls will emigrate, and we do not 
want them to arrive in their new homes ignorant." 

So there are housewives in America who have cause for 
thankfulness to Father O'Hara. I remarked to him that 
the Sisters seemed very bright and cheerful, that they lacked 
the solemn austerity associated with some religious orders. 

"They're good women," he said, smiling. "I've talked 
to them. I've told them that prayers and fasting are excel- 
lent things, and I hoped they would practice them. But I 
told them that working for the poor and unfortunate was 
the best form of prayer I knew." 

This is the Rev. Denis O'Hara, parish priest. It seems 
to me that the "P. P." which he writes after his name is as 
noble distinction as any string of letters to be found in the 
peerage. It is the Distinguished Service Order of humanity. 



VIII 

THE HUMAN SIDE 

From the top of a fairy mound, where the elves dance 
of a summer's night, I have seen the Problem' of the Land 
as in a picture ten miles wide. And from a seat on Pat 
Tuohy's jaunting car, from hazy noon to frosted silver even- 
ing, I have seen the panorama of the tragic earth unroll for 
thirty Irish miles. That's a day's work. What a picture it 
was! I thought of the vales of Pennsylvania and the velvet 
fields of our middle West. Here they were over again, mile 
<an mile of the fairest land the mind can conceive, rich with 
promise of fertility, green still to the very verge of winter,,* 
smiling, beautiful — and empty. That is the tragedy of it. 
I had spent weary days and nights in places where humanity 
is wretchedness incarnate and men and women huddle 
crowded amid grim barrenness. There are ranges here 
where the wind may sweep for leagues over living fields and 
never know the taint of the turf smoke. The crows that 
wheel black against the sky must mount far to spy out a 
chimney or a hayrick. The hares that run wild know no 
strangers but the rough-coated cattle that graze in scattered 
herds. It is fertility and loneliness; the land that mourns 
for the people as they mourn for the land. 

"Come," said John Fitzgibbon, "come, and I'll show 
you what we fight for and why." 

It was Sunday in Castlerea, and the shuttered street lay 
silent and empty, the folk having gone from church to din- 
ner. The sun at its highest point hung as though setting 
and the street was in wintry shadow. We climbed on the 
jaunting car, wrapping the rugs well, for the wind was keen 
and piercing, and clattered out on the road to the eastward. 
At the first corner stood a stalwart member of the Royal 
Irish Constabulary, in his boots and cloak and peaked cap. 

*Chapters VIII, IX, X and XI were written in Castlerea, 

County Roscommon, in December, 1902. 

54 



THE HUMAN SIDE 55 

He glanced at us sharply, then disappeared, with ostentatious 
indifference. 

I shall have a good deal to say of John Fitzgibbon, for 
he is a man to write about. But for the present we shall 
just glance at him, as he balances himself on the swaying 
car. A stout man, with a rugged, burly figure; a round, 
healthy, keen, kindly, red face; a close-trimmed beard of 
gray-streaked copper, and blue eyes that twinkle or grow 
hard as he talks. For the rest, he is a man of the people, 
chairman of the Roscommon County Council, an enthusiastic 
official of the United Irish League, a speaker of natural 
force, a devout Christian, a total abstainer and a zealot for 
temperance. Add to this that he is a prosperous and 
respected merchant and has served four terms in prison for 
his political views, and you have a rough sketch of one o^ 
the finest Irishmen I have ever met. 

For half a mile or so we skirted the Sandford demesne, 
tfhere great trees stand thick behind the time-blackened 
wall, then swung into the country road, with its border of 
leafless hawthorn hedge. When we were quite clear of the 
village I turned and looked behind, for I knew what to 
expect. Two hundred yards back was a man on a bicycle; 
a trim-built man in a dark uniform, with peaked cap. The 
present government does not approve of explorations by 
American newspaper men, particularly under the guidance 
of such dangerous criminals as John Fitzgibbon. Hence the 
presence of the R. I. C. man, detailed to follow us though 
we traveled till another dawn. 

"There he is," I said. John Fitzgibbon glanced back. 
"Oho!" he said. " 'Tis Reilly, the brave lad. Well, 
he has a ride before him." 

"Bad luck to him," said Pat Tuohy to his pipe. 
"I am quite interested in Reilly," said Mr. Fitzgibbon. 
"He tried his level worst to send me to jail for six months 
a while back — hard labor, too, on the stone pile. He's one 
of the most promising members of the force hereabouts, and 
some day he'll be an inspector, I doubt not. He's devoted 
to his duty, as you see, and I don't know his equal for giving 
the testimony that's wanted. It was my privilege to prove 
him a liar in open court on the occasion I'm speaking of, 



$6 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

whereby I'm taking this ride with you instead of swinging 
a sledge in Castlebar jail." 

All this was said quite pleasantly. There was no 
visible rancor about it, but I began to appreciate the cold 
enmity that exists between the people and the government 
police who harass them. 

A few miles out the car stopped at the foot of a lane 
and we walked to the top of a hill, then climbed a low stone 
wall. Before us was a circular mound of green, a hundred 
feet in diameter at the base, perhaps, and forty or fifty feet 
high. We climbed up. The top was perfectly round, thirty 
feet across, with a depression which made the outer edge a 
ridge. The thing was puzzling. 

"This is a fairy mound," laughed Mr. Fitzgibbon. I 
suggested an ancient burial place, with unimagined treasures 
of the bronze age concealed in it. 

"Tut, man," he said, "there isn't a native in the country 
would drive a pick into the turf of Mullaghaduhy hill, so 
whatever is inside will stay there. It was built by fairies, 
you know. Well, personally, I think it was a sort of watch 
tower in the old days, or perhaps a cannon was mounted 
here. Look what a range it had." 

Around and below us, on every side, lay the country, 
flooded with the pale light of the, winter sun. The view 
embraced eight or ten miles in all directions, a rolling green 
plain fading away into grassy hills. Here and there were 
small clumps or rows of trees. Low stone walls followed 
the contour of the land, making big and little fields of 
irregular shape. The dark streaks were ditches, the winding 
thread of silver a little stream. I counted ten houses within 
vision on that great stretch. Each had two or three acres 
of tilled ground. The rest was grass. The only living 
things in sight were tiny scattered flocks of sheep and cattle. 
Mr. Fitzgibbon translated. 

"We are overlooking several estates," he said; "Balff, 
Irwin, Sandford, Murphy — corners of all of therm are in 
sight. Oh, yes, there were farms here once, hundreds of 
them. But all the people were evicted. They emigrated to 
America, or moved, or died. The dozen or so farms you see 
are held by men having long leases. They're all happy and 




PAT TUOHY AND HIS JAUNTING CAR. 




BETTER THAN THE OLD STYLE. 



THE HUMAN SIDE 57 

prosperous, though the rents are very high. The others — 
there was no help for them." 

"Why were they evicted? Wouldn't they pay rent?" 

"Most of them couldn't. The great 'clearing out' 
started at the time of the famine, fifty years ago*. The people 
couldn't get food to eat, let alone money for the landlords. 
Then the world demanded cattle, and the landlords decided 
to turn these fertile lands into grazing ranches. That 
doomed those who had fought their way through the famine. 
So they all went. But come; we've just started." t 

Our course lay off to the southward, over low. rolling 
hills and long meadows. The road was hard with frost and 
rang to the horse's hoofs. The surrounding scene was still 
the same — beyond the low stone walls lay endless green fields, 
with not a sign of farm or crops. Every few miles a little 
thatched house stood by the roadside, with a tiny patch of 
vegetable garden and a cluster of hayricks, brown in the sun. 
These were the huts of the herders. Each man has 250 to 
300 acres under his care. 

"That's it," said Mr. Fitzgibbon; "the best land in Ros- 
common, fit to support thousands. And on land where ten 
families might live in decent comfort the only occupants are 
a man and a dog. A man and a dog. Not a crop on twenty 
miles of it, and the people wanting for food over yonder." 

As we rounded the top of a hill a glimpse of historic 
Ireland broke the monotony of the depopulated land. 
Between us and the low-hanging sun was a ruin, a great 
quadrangle of thick stone walls, with the remnants of a 
high tower at each corner. On the south front, covered with 
drapery of green ivy, the wall was less eaten by age than the 
rest. 

"Ballintober Castle," said Mr. Fitzgibbon. "The 
castle of the O'Connors, Kings of Connaught." 

Grim, silent, deserted, this pile of blackened stones over- 
looking the fertile, empty land seemed pathetically out of 
place. It should have crumbled to dust and disappeared with 
the fighting chieftains who ruled the Ireland of the Irish. 
The property, by the way, is still in the royal family. It is 
owned by The O'Conor Don, a famous member of the older 
generation of to-day. A year or two ago he gave a picnic 



58 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

in the ruins to the Irish Historic Society — chicken sandwiches 
and champagne in the quadrangle where the men at arms 
once cheered their mailed leaders. 

Still the miles were reeled off, and we saw nothing but 
green fields on every side, with houses just often enough to 
emphasize the loneliness. One hovel was such a wretched 
looking place that we stopped. The walls gaped with fissures 
and the thatch of the roof was falling in. I thought it must 
be untenanted, but a woman came to the door. She was a 
weird-looking creature, with gray hair that hung in ragged 
strips over her head and face. Her feet were bare. Mr. 
Fitzgibbon spoke to her. She answered sullenly. 
"Who lives here?" 
"I do. Meself." 
"What rent do you pay?" 
"I don't know. My brother pays it." 
''How much land have you?" 
"Divil a perch." 

Then she turned and went back into the hut. 
As we drove along I had noticed a peculiar formation 
in the ground here and there. Across the fields lay low, 
green ridges, sometimes two or three hundred yards long. 
In some places they looked like lines of grass. In others 
they melted into the level ground. I asked what they were. 
"The remains of walls and ditches of the old farms," 
answered Mr. Fitzgibbon. "You'll find them all over these 
lands. When the tenants were evicted the walls were thrown 
down, and grass grew over the places. You will see here 
and there a clump or row of trees. They mark where the 
farmhouses used to stand. The houses were leveled and the 
walls that border the road we are on were built of stones 
that once sheltered the evicted tenants." 

It was ghastly. I began to see the marks of devasta- 
tion everywhere. The fields on every side were scarred with 
the green ridges, as though the whip of oppression had left 
great welts on the surface of the land. In two or three 
places we came upon the crumbling ruins of houses, which 
for some reason had not been carried away. There was one 
of which the four walls still stood, with the chimney, though 
the roof had disappeared years ago. We could still trace the 



THE HUMAN SIDE 59 

outlines of the little garden and the remnants of a stable. A 
hare scampered away as I peered through a gaping hole 
where there had been a window. 

"The family that lived there had fifty acres of good 
land," said Mr. Fitzgibbon. "They were evicted because the 
landlord wanted the land to add to his grazing ranch. AH 
of them went to America." 

Twelve miles southeast of Castlerea we crossed the rail- 
road and entered an avenue of great trees. Half way up the 
avenue we met a party of men in knickerbockers and women 
in furs. They were members of a shooting party occupying 
Donamon Castle, which we saw further on, a fine, old, gray 
building, with a view of miles of green country. 

"This is a fair example of absentee landlordism," said 
Mr. Fitzgibbon. "This is the estate of Sir George Caul- 
field; 11,000 acres, rent-roll about $40,000 a year. The 
good land is let to* big grazers; the poor land to small 
tenants. The owners have not lived here for sixty years. 
The castle and woods are let to shooting parties during the 
season." 

We passed Kilbegnet, turned north, skirted the tiny 
hamlet of Crosswell and so reached the place called Glinsk. 
Here there was another relic of Irish Ireland. On the side 
of the hill was the gray ruin of a big house, known, of 
course, as "the castle." It had belonged to the Burkes, I 
was told, a fine old family of the country. There were about 
10,000 acres. The Burkes were good landlords, but they 
became embarrassed financially at the time of the great 
famine, and the estate was sold to Pollock, "the arch 
evictor," and 1100 families were turned out of their homes. 
A few miles more of the empty ranches, then a few miles 
across bogs that seemed to stretch to the horizon. It was 
nearly five o'clock, and the sun had set long ago. A new 
moon made the road white, and showed the bog heather 
silvering with frost. Befriended by the darkness, Constable 
Reilly pedaled along close to the rear of the car, whistling 
softly to himself, for his ride was nearly over. So we passed 
through the quiet street of Ballymoe and on to Castlerea. 
At Mr. Fitzgibbon's door we climbed down, stiff and cold. 



6o PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

"I have seen where the people used to be," I said, "but 
where are they now — those who did not emigrate or die?" 

"Come with me to-morrow, sir, and I'll show you," 
said Pat Tuohy, and I said I would. 

We started on a bright morning and went north and 
northwest from Castlerea; in the opposite direction, that is, 
from where lay the rich grazing ranches. We had not gone 
many miles before the difference in the country became 
marked. The green fields disappeared, and as the road 
wound along a slight ridge there lay miles of unkind-looking 
knd on either side of us, with wide stretches of brown bog. 
And here, where everything conspired to cheat husbandry 
and make life hard, I found the people. Their cabins were 
on every side ; where stones were sown thick in the soil, and 
down in the lowlands where the morasses lay. The houses 
were pitifully mean, the tilled patches pitifully small. The 
poverty was glaring. 

In course of time we came to a place called Feigh. 
There are some to whom it bears the sacred name of home, 
therefore I shall not say how altogether wretched it was. 
It comprised a cluster of hovels on the ridge road, with hill 
slopes of stony ground and hollows of bog and swamp. The 
bailiffs had been there before me. In half a dozen of the 
poor houses I saw the "emergency men" who are placed in 
charge after evictions. Each place was guarded by four or 
five policemen. Most of the unhappy people had disap- 
peared, but I found one of them, a stalwart man, still young, 
who came swinging along the road with a big creel full of 
turf strapped to his back. 

"You talk to him, sir," said Pat Tuohy. "He'll tell 
ye. Ay, sir, he'll tell ye." 

His name was Bernard King, and he was thirty-six years 
old. The day was cold, so we walked up and down the road 
together as he told me the story of an evicted tenant. It 
seemed a fearful tale to me, as he told it, perhaps because 
I could see all around me the desolate homes. 

"There was thirty-one acres of land, sir," he began. 
''It belonged to my father before me, and to his mother 
before him." 



THE HUMAN SIDE 



DI 



"You owned it, then?" 

"Oh, no, sir. 'Twas this way: My grandmother, rest 
her soul, got the land seventy-odd years ago. 'Twas in the 
family a long time, you see. She went to London and 
worked for seven years, until she got a little money put by, 
enough to get a farm near her old home. Then she came 
back here and rented the thirty-one acres from Lord de 
Freyne. She paid a big fine to get possession of the land, 
and a big rent besides — £8 a year. 

"It was hard work, I've heard tell, makin' that land 
raise a crop. It needed drains, d'ye see, and only the land- 
lord could build the drain, because the land lay on the bot- 
tom of the valley, and the whole place had to be drained at 
once. But the landlord, of course, would have nothin' to do 
with it, barrin' collectin' his rents. But grandmother and 
her husband worked hard, and made shift to raise a kind of 
livin' out of the farm. They got through the famine, too. 
After that, they had improved the place so much that the 
rent was raised to £10 a year. By and by grandmother died 
and it came to my father. He did his best, but somehow 
he couldn't make it go. When he gave it to me, five years 
back, there was four years' rent due on it. But I got mar- 
ried and took hold of it. My wife had a bit of money, and 
she paid up every shillin' of the back rent. Still we couldn't 
raise enough crops to keep us goin'." 

"Not on thirty-one acres? Where is the land?" 

"Come with me, sir, and I'll show you." 

We walked to the edge of the hill and the mar pointed 
to a spot a quarter of a mile away, in the hollow. I said I 
could see only a sheet of water. 

"Yes, sir," he said, simply, "that's it. Twenty-five 
acres of my land is under that water. It's flooded eight or 
nine months in the year. In the other three months I tried 
to raise a bit of hay, but the grass soured because of the 
water, and it wasn't good for the cattle." 

Here was a case to make one think. This tenant paid 
a yearly rental for a. piece of land. In theory this was for 
twelve months' use. In practice five-sixths of his land was 
under water for three-fourths of the year. 

"So I couldn't pay the rent," said Bernard King. 



62 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

''Would you like to come and see my wife, sir? She'd take 
it very kindly if you'd come." 

I wondered where this evicted family was living. We 
walked up the road a few hundred yards and stopped in 
front of — a stable. There was no mistaking the place. 
The broken thatch had been repaired and new windows and 
doors put in, but this building had unmistakably been meant 
for cattle and had housed cattle. I went inside. It was ten 
feet by eighteen. In one corner was a bed made of rough 
planks. Against the wall was a dresser, holding rough 
dishes. Two chairs, a table and a smolder of turf in the 
chimney — that was all. Mrs. King came forward, smiling 
bravely, a wee baby in her arms. But when her husband 
said I was from America she broke down and cried. 

"America !" she said. "God bless you, sir, I lived 
there. Thirteen years I worked in New York and over in 
Jersey trying to get a bit of money so I could have a home 
in the old place. First I sent a lot to my own folks; then I 
saved up for myself. I brought back $565." 

"And then we got married," said her husband. "Four 
years ago it was. I had the farm and my wife had her for- 
tune, and we thought sure we were fixed for life. You 
remember, sir, I told you there was four years' back rent 
due. My wife paid it." 

"I did," she said. "Thirteen years I'd worked for that 
money and I paid it out in three. I paid Lord de Freyne's 
agent every shilling of the arrears. Sixty golden sovereigns, 
sir. 

What is the use of saying that the poor woman might 
better have stayed in America ? The most fanatical patriot 
who reads this cannot measure the passionate love these 
people bear to the soil of their race, cruel as they have found 
it. Not many come back, but this woman did, and to her 
there was nothing so blessed as the privilege of spending the 
savings of years to buy a farm near her old home. But her 
sacrifice and her husband's work alike were of no avail. The 
land simply could not be made to yield food and clothing for 
the family and rent for the landlord. Little by little the 
savings melted away— the "golden sovereigns" disappeared. 
The beginning of the end came last February, when a writ 



THE HUMAN SIDE 63 

of eviction was served on this family, with many others. 
They owed $125 rent. While they struggled despairingly to 
raise some money the remorseless machinery of the law 
ground on slowly, and to the rent due was added $200 in 
costs. This was quite hopeless. They gave up. 

The eViction was on August 26 last. A scene familiar 
to the countryside. The bailiff and his men came, guarded 
by fifty or sixty policemen with rifles, for they knew there 
would be a crowd of tenants there. Amid this display of 
armed force the little household was cleared out. The wail- 
ing of women filled the street, for the horror of eviction 
smote every one of them. The poor furniture was carried 
out and flung on the ground and the little treasures of the 
household piled up for all the crowd to see. Who can meas- 
ure the grief and shamie that burdened this man and woman? 
It is the ruthless exposure of the home, the brutal turning 
out in the open of things sacred to the hearth, that seem so 
cruel. Yet it is all perfectly legal, and the most civilized 
nation on earth quite approves of it. 

"And there we were on the roadside, sir," said the 
woman, "with not a roof to shelter us from the rain. The 
baby, poor dear, was two months old when he was evicted." 

The little chapi in her arms looked soberly at me, as 
unconscious as his mother was that her remark sounded so 
pit' ful. 

"But at least," I suggested, "the house was yours?" 

"No, indeed, sir," said Bernard King; "that went with 
the rest. Sure 'twas not enough to satisfy the claim, because, 
you see, the costs were £40, near twice as much as the rent." 

There was nothing more to be said. I summed up the 
case in my mind thus : Seventy years ago a woman, having 
worked in London for seven years, saved enough to pay the 
"fine," as it is called, for the privilege of taking a farm*. She 
and her husband cleared the land, reclaimed it, built fences, 
a house and outbuildings. Her son and her grandson con- 
tinued the work of improvement, and her grandson's wife 
spent $500 in cash keeping the place up. But, leaving aside 
this expenditure of money, there was spent on the farm the 
heart-breaking labor of three generations. & 

And the result? For an unpaid claim of $125 the whole 



64 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

farm, buildings,, improvements and all, was seized by the 
landlord. The third generation was left homeless, poorer 
than the brave grandmother when she emigrated to London 
seventy years ago. There may be proper comments upon 
this story. I shall not attempt any. 

When the Kings were put on the roadside the neighbors 
took upon themselves their misery as part of the common 
burden. One man offered a cow stable for which he had no 
use, his cattle having been sold by the bailiffs to satisfy a rent 
claim. In this reeking place the father and mother and their 
two children took shelter. With the help of neighbors the 
filth was cleared out, the thatch repaired and the doors made 
tight against the cold weather. There the family are living 
to-day in a place where no self-respecting man in America 
would stable a horse he valued. This is the end of seventy 
years of work. 

The principal object of this trip was to discover a con- 
trast. In this neighborhood the great Dillon estate and the 
estates of Lord de Freyne and the Murphy family may be 
found side by side. The Dillon estate, it will be remem- 
bered, was purchased three years ago by the Congested Dis- 
tricts Board, and is now in slow process of resale to the 
tenants. These make small payments, and in time will own 
their homesteads. Their neighbors, under the Murphy and 
de Freyne regimes, pay fifty per cent, more for rent merely. 
On the Dillon estate the board is digging a drainage system, 
enlarging holdings and building comfortable houses. On the 
other lands nothing is done for the tenants. The result is 
not surprising. This district is the very hotbed of agitation. 
Those who are excluded from the benefits of ownership are 
fighting madly to raise themselves. There have been refusals 
to pay rent, consequent evictions, public meetings suppressed, 
speakers sent to prison. The whole countryside is in a fer- 
ment, which Dublin Castle, through the police, is trying to 
quell by attacking the few liberties the people have. 

Lough Glynn was the largest settlement we reached. 
It consists of a row of houses set on either side of the turn- 
pike. The best building is the little store and house of Pat- 
rick Webb, who is the district leader of the United Irish 
League. He has been in prison, of course. It is worth 




CONSTABULARY AT AN EVICTION. 



:'■;".("? Z ~rs. 7 




BERNARD KING AND HIS STABLE HOME. 



THE HUMAN SIDE 6s 

while noting, by the way, that the leaders in this movement 
are always found among what we term the "solid" men of 
the community. Back of the village is the little lake which 
gives it its name, and on the north shore, seen from the 
village through the surrounding trees, stands Lough Glynn 
House, once the seat of Lord Dillon. I was curious to see 
the place. 

We took the road around the western end of the lake, 
entered where the rusted gates still hung to the old stone 
pillars, and passed up a magnificent avenue of trees, through 
which we could see the lake, lying blue in the sun. This 
brought us to the rear of the house, among the long rows of 
stables and outbuildings. The caretaker was absent, and the 
place was quite silent. The air of desertion was oppressive. 
I walked around to the front of the house. The windows 
stared blankly across the lawn and shrubbery and down to 
the lake. This old gray house was a type of the passing 
regime. The owner, who never called it his home, is gone, 
and all the fair demesne has passed to the people who were 
his servants. 

It did not take much imagination to people the house 
with a jolly party. Grooms lounged at the stables. The 
big front doors, were open, and across the lawn came serv- 
ants with tea for those who strolled under the trees. 
Laughter floated up from the lake, where boats glided over 
the smooth waters. Everything here was peace and plenty 
and pleasure. And outside the park gates the people toiled 
without reward and without hope. Now it is the house that 
is without hope, silent and deserted. Soon the woods where 
no peasant would have dared to set his foot will be leveled, 
and tidy farmhouses will bo built where the game was pur- 
sued by indolent hunters. The people are coming back to 
their own. 

Pat Tuohy and I traveled many miles that day. On the 
Dillon estate we saw where the Congested Districts Board 
had built fences and drains and made roads and erected 
houses. Often the old and new stood nearly side by side — 
the thatched hut already falling into decay and the slate- 
roofed house of stone speaking of decency and comfort. 
On our way back we struck again through the desolate scenes 
s 



66 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

of the unimproved estates, where the bleak, arid landscape 
is rendered all the more hideous by the wretched homes of 
the tenants. We went up nearly as far as Ballaghaderreen, 
then around by Frenchpark, the seat of Lord de Freyne, and 
so back to Castlerea by moonlight. I had seen more misery 
than I can ever describe, and much simple happiness where 
the people had had a chance to work for themselves. But 
one scene remained in my mind and one voice rang in my 
ears. As we left the sorry little home of Bernard King and 
his wife I put a piece of silver in the baby's hand. The 
mother tried to give it back, but her eyes filled with tears 
and she gave up. 

"God bless you, sir," she whispered, brokenly, "and a 
happy, happy home to you !" 

She had wished for me the supreme blessing which she 
had never known. 



IX 
SOME OF THE RECORD 

With John Fitzgibbon I had traversed miles upon miles 
of fertile lands, where there are no inhabitants but a few 
cattle herders, and later I had visited the poverty-stricken 
settlements which have grown up in the bogs and on the 
rocky wastes. He explained the situation at length. 

"In this district," he said, "it is not high rents that keep 
the people poor. Though the Land Commission were to give 
them their present farms free, they could not support them- 
selves. The necessity is to let them have decent land, which 
by industry may be made to feed and clothe those who 
occupy it. 

"You saw the thousands of acres of rich soil now used 
for cattle ranches, but still bearing the marks of destroyed 
homesteads. Away back in the thirties the landlords began 
to get rid of their tenants. The famine of '49 gave great 
impetus to the clearing out, and the enormous demand for 
cattle during the Crimean War was another thing that turned 
the landlords toward grazing as more profitable than tenant 
farming. A landlord, instead of having to collect rents from 
two hundred or three hundred tenants, found he could let the 
same land to half a dozen big grazers. This rid him of a 
lot of trouble and saved him the annoyance of constant agita- 
tion about excessive rents. 

"So the people were driven out, those who could pay 
their rents with those who couldn't. But wasn't the landlord 
within his rights, you say? To be sure he was. But think 
of what those rights were under the iniquitous laws. By 
statute he was the owner not only of the land, but of every 
improvement which generations of tenants had made. His 
order to them to leave was a forfeiture of their property. 
The houses and barns they had built, where their fathers had 
lived and their children had been born, passed to the landlord 
absolutely, and there was no law under which the tenant 

67 



68 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

could recover a penny for the home stolen from him. A 
man's father and grandfather, perhaps, reclaimed the land 
fifty or sixty years before; drained it, fenced it, built house 
and barns. At the command of the landlord all the labor of 
those years was swept away. 

"Those were terrible days, as my father has told me. 
The whole countryside was filled with sorrowing, homeless 
people. The blows of axe and crowbar were heard every- 
where, and men and women wept to see their homes leveled 
by the destroyers. Houses, barns and walls were flung down, 
and the stones that had sheltered happy families were built 
into fences around the grazing fields. I'll give you an 
instance or two. There was a nobleman who owned 11,000 
acres, on part of which were more than one hundred tenants 
with little farms. The nobleman was a generous man, and 
his tenants were better treated than others. But he spent all 
his time in England, and trusted to his agent to manage the 
estate. This agent determined to gather an estate for him- 
self. So, during a time of agitation, he wrote to his 
employer letters warning him to remain away, as he would 
be assassinated if he came to his Irish property. Then the 
agent began to evict the tenants from the lands he coveted. 
Nearly a hundred of them were turned out on the roadside, 
their houses were torn down and the agent became the lessee 
of a fine property. His grandsons hold it to this day, and 
set up to be fine country gentlemen. The descendants of the 
evicted tenants are living over here in the bogs, or are in 
America. 

"You heard me speak of Allen Pollock, known as the 
'arch evictor.' He was a wealthy Scotch grazer, and when 
the government forced the sale of estates belonging to land- 
lords who had become insolvent this Pollock bought great 
tracts. The sales were made through the Incumbered 
Estates Court, established in 1848, and authority was given 
to clear out the tenants. Pollock evicted 11 00 families. 
No reason or excuse was necessary, beyond the fact that he 
wanted the lands. Men who had been born and raised on 
the little farms were put on the roadside. Many had 
struggled through the famine, only to be evicted at last, in 
spite of their ability to pay the rents. Pollock's idea was to 



SOME OF THE RECORD 69 

work his land as a series of great farms, under the care of 
stewards and laborers. But the scheme failed. In fifteen 
years a receiver was appointed and the land was divided up 
among half a dozen grazers. The cattle browse to-day 
where the homes of 5000 people once stood. 

"In these terrible days the estates of Lord Dillon and 
Lord de Freyne became a refuge for evicted tenants. They 
took hundreds of holdings, only the worst land being obtain- 
able by them, and there they began again the struggle for 
existence. You have seen to what misery they have 
descended. It is almost incredible the amount of labor that 
has been expended in trying to reclaim these worthless lands. 
In most places the soil is so light that the poor tenants had to 
spread gravel on it to give it weight. They dug the gravel 
from the beds and carried it in creels on their backs and 
spread it on the lands — sometimes as much as a hundred 
tons to the acre. 

"Each landlord had a man in his employ called a land 
valuer. This man's duty was to inspect the holdings from 
time to 1 time, estimate the improvements and raise the rents 
accordingly. Land which was rented at the beginning for 
three shillings an acre had to pay more each year as it was 
improved, until the price rose to twelve or fifteen shillings 
an acre. The rent of the Dillon estate rose from £5000 to 
£26,000 in eighty years. Every shilling of the increase was 
paid by the tenants in improvements they made by their own 
labor. The result was, of course, to discourage thrift. The 
man who tried to improve his condition paid dearly for it. 
The system put a premium on laziness and a penalty on 
industry. There were occasional outbursts of protest and 
violence; but for the most part the poor people were driven 
dumbly to their fate. No leader dared to rise up and cham- 
pion them, for that meant imprisonment. It was not until 
the Land League agitation of 1879 swept over the country 
that effective defense was found. This outburst, with all the 
lawlessness it caused, resulted in the passage of the Land Act 
of 1881. 

"Now for the present agitation. The Dillon and de 
Freyne estates, as you know, lie side by side. On the Dillon 
estate, which was bought by the Congested Districts Board 



70 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

three years ago, the tenants are getting comfortable homes, 
their holdings are being enlarged and they pay one-third less 
per year as purchase money than their neighbors on private 
estates pay for rent. Naturally, the unfortunate ones grew 
bitterly discontented, and a year ago they determined to try 
to obtain better terms. A deputation, appointed at a meet- 
ing, went to call on Lord de Freyne with a request that he 
reduce their rents to the figure which their neighbors paid as 
purchase instalments. The gates of Frenchpark were shut 
against them. The landlord would not even receive their 
protest. The war was on. A meeting was held in the village 
of Frenchpark, where it was decided not to pay any more 
rent and to raise a defense fund. John Dillon was in Bal- 
laghaderreen at the time, and was asked to sanction the 
project; but as John Redmond was in America, he declined 
to encourage the movement at that period. But the tenants 
were determined, and when, ten days later, writs of eviction 
were served on the Murphy estate tenants, the struggle 
began. The same day a big meeting was held at Fairy- 
mount, which I attended. A proposition was made to create 
a defense fund by taxing each tenant one shilling in the pound 
on the valuation of his holding. With the idea of discour- 
aging the movement, for I did not consider the time ripe for 
it, I declared the assessment would have to be at least five 
shillings in the pound. The tenants agreed promptly, and 
thereupon it became my duty to support the project heart and 
soul. I have done so." 

> "Wait a minute. As I understand it, the rents of these 
farms have been fixed by the Land Commission, at figures 
which are presumably just. The landlords had no part in 
fixing them. How do you justify the tenants in their refusal 
to pay?" 

"First, because their neighbors paid one-third less for 
purchase; second, because the so-called judicial rents are out- 
rageously excessive. The Commissioners know nothing 
whatever of land. The labor expended in reclaiming the 
farms during the last fifty years amounts to more than the 
true value. Evictions on the de Freyne estate began in July. 
The usual course is to sue for ejectment in the county courts, 
where the costs against the tenant are from $10 to $12, 



SOME OF THE RECORD 71 

Lord de Freyne choose to go to the Superior Court, though 
that process could give him possession only two weeks sooner. 
There the costs to the tenant averaged $200, which, of 
course, made it quite impossible for the tenants to pay. The 
committee in charge defended the suits, but lost, and the 
tenants were turned out. Each family receives $5 a week 
from the fund." 

This seemed to me a costly war. A refusal to pay rents, 
consequent eviction by due process of law, and the support of 
evicted families out of a common fund. 

"What good have you accomplished by this remarkable 
system?" I asked. John Fitzgibbon smote the table with his 
fist. 

"It has brought you here," he said. "It has spread an 
agitation through Ireland which will not subside until the 
question is settled. It has focused the attention of the whole 
British people and their government upon the injustice that 
rules here. It has attracted the notice of the United States, 
and a great American newspaper sends a special correspond- 
ent here to describe conditions as they are. The cost is great, 
but we are satisfied with the results." 



X 

CONGESTION AND MIGRATION 

All over Ireland the injustice of the land system is 
apparent, but it is in the West that the conditions have 
ground the people down into such misery that only revolu- 
tionary legislation can lift them up again. The present pur- 
pose is, therefore, to take a more general survey of the west- 
ern problem. The government recognized its existence in 
1 891 by the establishment of the Congested Districts Board. 
A glance at the map will show how great was the need 
for measures of amelioration. The congested districts 
cover 3,500,000 acres, with a population of more than 
500,000. Nearly seven-eighths of Donegal, three-fourths of 
Leitrim, a third of Sligo and Roscommon, the greater part 
of Mayo, half of Galway and Kerry and a fourth part of 
Cork — in these lands a half million souls are sunk in dire 
poverty. Those districts investigated personally by the 
writer lie in Roscommon, Mayo and Galway. The investi- 
gation might have been prolonged indefinitely. "You may 
go to five hundred places," I was told, "but you will find only 
the same story five hundred times repeated." 

Under the act creating the Board, a "congested district" 
is one in which the average annual ratable valuation is less 
than $7.50 for each person. The unit of congestion is the 
electoral division, of which there are 3652. In all, 429 
divisions were scheduled as congested, and the population of 
these districts, estimated at more than half a million, came 
under the care of the Board. 

How poor are these people? Some figures may illus- 
trate the answer. The "poor law valuation" of the districts 
— that is, the yearly taxable value of all the property — is 
about $5 for each individual. But this is a very vague state- 
ment, after all. I am able to present figures showing the 
actual condition of typical families, as discovered through 
investigation by the Department of Agriculture. The follow- 

72 



CONGESTION AND MIGRATION 7o 

ing table shows the receipts and expenditures for a year of a 
family of five persons "in ordinary circumstances" : 

EECEIPTS. EXPENDITURES. 

Sale of bullock $22.50 Rent $10.00 

" " 5 sheep 18.75 Taxes 1.41 

« " pig 17.50 Tea 29.25 

" "eggs 11.08 Sugar 9.75 

" " homespun 17.50 Meal 3S.50 

" " corn 3.75 Flour 9.37 

" "fish 40.00 Clothing 32.12 

" " knitting, etc 5.00 Tobacco..... 11.91 

One young pig 3.75 

$136.08 Implements, etc 6.18 

$152.24 

Food raised and consumed on the farm, about 35.00 

This family lives on the seacoast of Galway, so that 
fishing supplies part of the revenue. The following shows 
the condition of a family of four persons, "in the poorest 
circumstances," as officially reported: 

RECEIPTS. EXPENDITURES. 

Sale of eggs $5.75 Rent $5.00 

Sixty days' labor, at 25c. . 15.00 Taxes 50 

Herding cattle 20.00 Meal 29.25 

Clothing 2.50 

$40.75 Groceries 20.00 



$57.25 
Potatoes grown on the farm and eaten 30.00 

It will be observed that this family of four persons con- 
sumes $79.25 worth of food during the year, or at the rate 
of less than five and one-half cents per day each. Coarse 
meal and potatoes form the staple diet. These are only 
figures, but they are government figures, and may aid Ameri- 
cans to understand what the poverty in "congested districts" 
is. The family just cited is typical of thousands of families 
in the West. There are many more, however, whose condi- 
tion is somewhat better. I mean those whose able-bodied 
members migrate to England and Scotland every year and 
toil in the fields, returning with a few pounds in money to 
carry them through the winter. The reports give the receipts 
of such a family, from all sources, at $205 for the year; 
expenditures, $213.75; home produce consumed, $75. And 
this family, consisting of six persons, is cited as being in 



74 



PROBLEM OF THE LAND 



"comparatively good circumstances" ! As to the general 
conditions of life before the establishment of the Congested 
Districts Board, I quote the report of the Department of 
Agriculture : 

"The great majority of the inhabitants were in possession of 
small plots — they could hardly be called farms — generally about 
two to four acres in extent. The rents for these holdings varied 




SHADED PORTIONS SHOW CONGESTED DISTRICTS 

from a few shillings to several pounds a year. The plots were 
usually planted with potatoes and oats, and the methods of culti- 
vation were extremely primitive. There was no rotation of crops, 
no adequate supply of manure and no proper system of drainage, 
whilst the breeds of live stock were worn out and of little value. 
The result was that the inhabitants were forced to depend very 



CONGESTION AND MIGRATION 75 

largely upon certain secondary sources of income of an uncertain 
and varying nature. Many of them received occasional gifts from 
relatives in America, whilst weaving, knitting and sewing formed 
other small subsidiary sources of income. The results of sea fish- 
ing helped the families dwelling along the coast to eke out a scanty 
living, whilst those living inland depended largely upon the wages 
earned during some months of the year as migratory agricultural 
laborers in England or Scotland. 

"Thus in most cases the people did not really live on the produce 
of their holdings, but rather on some secondary source of income, 
such as field labor in England or Scotland. They paid a rent for 
their holding, generally not because of its agricultural value, but 
rather because it was necessary to have some home for their family. 
In a 'good year' many of the inhabitants were little more than free 
from the dread of hunger, whilst a bad year, arising from the 
complete or partial failure of their crops, produced a condition of 
semi-starvation." 

A brief and comprehensive statement of conditions in 
the congested districts was given by a witness before a royal 
commission on local taxation. He said: "In the congested 
districts there are two classes, namely, the poor and the desti- 
tute." But while the report of the Department of Agri- 
culture is of great interest, it fails to set forth certain vital 
facts. These are : 

First — With the exception of a few restricted localities, 
conditions are precisely the same as before the creation of the 
Congested Districts Board. The extracts quoted above 
might be read in the present tense. 

Second — The congestion of people is on barren lands, 
where, within easy reach of them, often at the very borders 
of their wretched holdings, there are thousands of acres of 
prime lands, rented by the landlords to cattle grazers. 

Third — Until the people are enabled by the government 
to purchase adequate farms they will remain in the same con- 
dition of hopeless misery. 

I would not be understood in this as criticising the work 
of the Congested Districts Board. That would be an absurd 
attitude for one who is hardly more than a casual visitor. 
But while even the most fervent land reformers praise the 
zeal of the board and welcome its uplifting influence, they 
point out that progress is desperately slow and that all the 
good accomplished has but touched the edges of the problem. 
What has been done during the eleven years? They have 



7 6 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

purchased estates aggregating 153,000 acres, at a total cost 
of $2,154,000. But the purchase is only a single step in the 
process. Usually several years are spent in negotiations, and 
when the matter is arranged other years pass in perfecting 
the complex details of transfer. Meanwhile the people suffer 

and die. ,. A , 

Yet whatever criticism there may be regarding delays, 
there can be none regarding the ultimate results. Clare 
Island is a splendid example of what the board is doing and 
how the work is benefiting the people. The property con- 
tains nearly 4000 acres. Under the tenant system the most 
desperate confusion grew up. There were no fences. No 
tenant knew positively where his land began or ended. 1 he 
whole island was practically held in common, and cattle 
strayed at will through the meager crops. The ninety-nve 
tenants who existed there paid nearly $2500 rent for their 
miserable little holdings. The first thing the board did was 
to build a wall across the island, separating the common 
grazing ground from the tilled lands. Drains were con- 
structed and fifty miles of fences were built. The most com- 
plicated task was rearranging the scattered holdings so that 
each tenant should have a compact farm. The land was 
"striped" into regular areas, stone walls dividing one trorn 
another. Thus, for the first time in their lives the people 
found themselves with lands which they could call their own. 
v When the board took hold of the property the occu- 
pants owed two years' rent to the landlord Employment 
upon the draining and fencing work enabled them to pay up 
these arrears. For four years more they were tenants or the 
board, and the report shows they paid every penny due. 
They are now actual owners of their farms, paying an aggre- 
gate of $1725 a year as purchase money instead of $2500 a 

year as rent. , , 

In all of these districts, it will be remembered, the 
term "congestion" does not mean that the population is exces- 
sive for the whole area, but that through the operation of the 
land system the people have been crowded into barren 
patches, while the best soil grows only grass for pasturing 
cattle The great object of the board is to provide for each 
family and sell to that family a farm which is big enough— 



CONGESTION AND MIGRATION 77 

say twenty-five to thirty acres — and rich enough to furnish a 
comfortable living when industriously worked. Since the 
people are crowded together in spots, and since often there 
is not enough good land in the neighborhood to distribute, 
the board is compelled to arrange migration. Thus some 
tenants in a crowded locality will be persuaded to give up 
their holdings, which are then divided among those who 
remain, until each has a compact and adequate farm. The 
migrants then move to another district, where similar provi- 
sion has been made for them. 

It will be seen that the whole problem is infinitely com- 
plicated. It is necessary to recolonize the west of Ireland, 
and as the* greater part of the land is still owned by landlords, 
the operation is difficult. Rather may we say that under 
present conditions it is hopeless. Every man in Great Britain 
whose opinion is recognized as sound is convinced now that 
the solution of the Irish land question, and particularly of the 
terrible problem of the West, can be found only in abolishing 
the archaic system of Irish landlordism and establishing the 
peasants as proprietors of the land they till. 

On my first trip to the West I was rather astonished to 
find that the train consisted of more than a dozen carriages, 
and that the third-class compartments were crowded with 
sturdy-looking men. Having heard of the poverty of the 
districts into which I was going, I was not prepared to see 
such heavy passenger traffic. Surely these men had not been 
away for a holiday? At a junction station a broad- 
shouldered, bearded man, with a heavy bundle hanging on 
his shoulder, cheerfully enlightened me. 

"Sure, sir, we've all been over in England workin'," he 
said. "Some have been gone three months, some six. I've 
been away since April myself, and there's twenty good 
pounds in me pocket this blessed minute to pay the rent an' 
buy a bit of bacon an' that for the winter." 

"But what do you go to England for? Why not stay 
on your own farm and work that?" 

"Ay, why not? You're a nice spoken gentleman, but 
beggin' yer pardon, it's little you know of our country. I 
can see that. Why don't we stay here? God save you, sir, 
an' do you think we go to England because we like it? Is 



78 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

it likely we'd leave our own farms if so be we'd get food an' 
clothes an' rent by stayin' ? Bad luck to it, we go because 
we have to. My boy's away in America, so there's only the 
old woman an' me, an' I have to leave half the year an' 
work in a furrin' land — England, mind ye — to get the money 
we need." 

"Then why not go to England altogether?" 

The big man turned and looked over the desolate coun- 
try. The winter dusk was falling swiftly and the outlines 
of the hills were indistinct, but we could, still see the empty 
land and feel its rugged unkindness. Yet the man's voice 
was very tender as he spoke. 

"Twenty miles on," he said, "there's a bit of a cabin 
and a bit of land. In that cabin I was born and on that land 
my father worked. Is it like, now, that I'd leave it to live 
in England or anywhere else? Man, have ye got a home? 
It's a rough place at the best, and not all the muscles I've 
got can dig a livin' out of it. But, God be good to me, I love 
it, sir." 

I learned much more at other times from men and writ- 
ings concerning this yearly migration of the workers, but the 
great truth of it lay in the simple words of this rugged toiler. 
They love their land, these Irish ! 

Consider what they do. They occupy little barren 
patches, where even with prosperous seasons life is a struggle. 
They know they cannot, howsoever great their industry, feed 
and clothe themselves from the products of the soil. They 
know that every spring the strongest of the family must go 
away and work among strangers. Yet when the hard task is 
over, when they have painfully saved the pennies earned, 
they come back to the old places and fight through the cruel 
winter with the earnings of their sacrifice. 

According to the returns compiled by the Board of 
Trade, 24,438 persons migrated from Connaught alone in 
1902. It is estimated that they brought back average earn- 
ings of $37.50, or a total of $916,425. That amounts to 
twenty-seven and one-half per cent, of the entire rent of the 
province, and has to be earned outside of the country. There 
are 31,873 families in Connaught whose holdings are worth 
less than $20 a year. Therefore, nearly every one of these 



CONGESTION AND MIGRATION 79 

families had to send a member to England to earn the neces- 
saries of life for the winter. A few facts regarding definite 
localities will illustrate how grievous is the condition which 
entails this unnatural system of migratory labor. One priest 
in Donegal reported a few years ago that out of 7000 persons 
in his parish 1000 had to spend several months of each year 
away from home. Some went to the more prosperous coun- 
ties in the east of Ireland, the greater number to England. 
From the district of Rathmore, Kerry, the priest reported, 
200 to 300 girls left in the middle of March and did not 
return until December 1. Perhaps the worst feature of the 
system is that it does not spare the women, nor even the 
children. A special correspondent of the London Times 
reported that the migrants included "practically every man, 
boy and girl able to work." 

"It cannot be regarded as satisfactory or desirable," he 
said, "to perpetuate a social condition in which it is needful 
for children of ages varying from nine to fifteen years to leave 
their homes and be employed chiefly in agricultural work in 
distant places without care or oversight." 

If the reader will remember that we are talking of 
human beings, of women and children, he will find nothing 
"dry" in the formal reports and figures dealing with this 
question. The Bessborough Commission stated : 

"The condition of the poorer tenants in numerous parts 
of Ireland, where it is said they are not able, if they had the 
land gratis, to live by cultivating it, is by some thought to 
be an almost insoluble problem." 

The O'Connor Don, a member of that commission, 
added this: 

"There are portions of Ireland in which the land is so 
bad and is so thickly populated that the questions of tenure 
and rent are mere trifles. If the present occupiers had the 
land forever and for nothing, they could not, in the best of 
years, live decently, and in bad years they must be in a state 
of starvation." 

Mr. P. W. Coyne, superintendent of statistics in the 
Department of Agriculture, wrote two years ago: 

"They (the migratory laborers) are not, properly 
speaking, agricultural laborers at all. They are as a class 



80 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

small landholders, or the wives, sons and daughters of small 
landholders. Were it not for the annual migration to Eng- 
land and Scotland, these poor people, low as their standard 
of comfort is, certainly could not make ends meet." 
The Congested Districts Board report says : 
"In a good year they are little more than free from the 
dread of hunger, while a complete or partial failure of their 
crop involves, as a consequence, proportionately greater or 
less suffering from insufficient food." 

Now for some eloquent figures concerning the migra- 
tion in this year 1902. From Mayo county, 18,838 men 
went to England and Scotland. They represented thirty- 
six per cent, of the adult male population and forty-five 
per cent, of the adult population engaged in agriculture. 
The figures from some of the districts are even more startling. 
The following table shows the total migration from the dis- 
tricts named and the percentage of the total adult male popu- 
lation represented : 

Migrants. Per cent. 

Swinford 5919 59 

Castlerea 4560 50 

Westport 3056 49 

Claremorris 3411 50 

Castlebar 2173 41 

Year after year they leave their homes, their families 
and their friends, and go far away, among strangers, to 
gather with bitter toil the money for the winter's food. And 
the returning season always finds them back, clinging dog- 
gedly to the barren soil. The man on the station platform 
was right. 

"God be good to them, they love the land." 




JOHN FITZGIBBON. 




IMPROVEMENTS ON CLARE ISLAND (See Page 133). 



XI 

THE WAR ON LIBERTY 

We sat, John Fitzgibbon and I, on either side of his 
big fireplace, where the turf embers glowed redly. My mind 
pictured again the country I had ridden through, the fair 
lands where there are only the scars of leveled homesteads, 
and the cruel barrens where men and women strive in helpless 
misery. It was good to think that this man with the sturdy 
frame and rugged, honest face and straight-thinking brain 
had devoted himself to the people. Yet it seemed a pity, too, 
that the state which rules this country should have made him 
and his kind implacable enemies of the system of govern- 
ment. The authorities had tried to brand him a criminal, 
and even now, as I saw with my own eyes, he is tracked by 
police as though he were plotting violence. Here was 
a man of solid sense, honest in every fiber, his training 
and his social position influencing him toward conservatism. 
By his own efforts he had built up a prosperous business, the 
success of which he endangered every hour he remained 
actively in politics. Why should such a man be subjected to 
harassment, to persecution, to the indignity of convict stripes? 
Was he really a menace to' the peace of the empire or the 
lives and property of the King's subjects? I asked him those 
questions, and his answer came at once, without a show of 
resentment. 

> "You see these two hands?" he said, holding them 
forth. "I would give them both, if the need came, to save 
the life of the worst landlord in Ireland. Yet with these 
hands I have broken stone and picked oakum as a common 
criminal. It is charged that I am a dangerous person. Oh, 
I tell you, the officials of the English government are fools 
that they pursue such methods! They sneer at Ireland 
because she is disloyal, and all the while they use the utmost 
endeavor and ingenuity to make her disloyal." 

6 81 



82 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

"Tell me why you have been in prison." 

"Would that interest Americans? Well, perhaps it 
would. From all I know of your country, I don't think they 
understand this part of our system. In spite of my interests 
as a merchant, which ought to make me cautious, I have been 
unable to keep out of this land fight. You'll understand that 
because I know the people, I live among them and see their 
sufferings day by day. Well, my first offense was in 1887, 
in a speech at a public meeting. There had been some evic- 
tions that were not justified, and there was a good deal of 
feeling over the matter. Some of the people were bitter 
because certain men had been selling food to the police in 
charge of the empty houses. When I spoke of the evictions 
a man in the audience cried out: 'How about those who are 
supplying milk to the police?' There was a laugh, and I 
thought best to pass over the question as a joke. So I said: 
T don't know anything about the milk, but I am inclined to 
think they won't get much cream.' There was another laugh, 
and the subject was dropped. I got a month at hard labor 
for that." 

"In the name of Gilbert and Sullivan, why and how?" 

"You know how the police watch public meetings? 
One of them, supposed to be an expert shorthand writer, is 
sent to the meeting. He is surrounded by a guard of police- 
men armed with rifles, who force a way for him, if necessary, 
until he is close to the speakers. He takes every word as 
spoken — or swears he does. His report goes to the police 
authorities, who prosecute whenever they desire to harass a 
man or check his influence or frighten the people. I was 
arrested. 

<* "Now for the system. The district had been pro- 
claimed, under the Crimes Act, and the ordinary privileges 
of defense were suspended. I was tried by two magistrates, 
sent down by Dublin Castle, paid by Dublin Castle, remov- 
able by Dublin Castle. The witnesses were the police, paid by 
Dublin Castle. Jury trial was denied me. The two castle 
magistrates had summary jurisdiction. I was charged with 
intimidating public officers in discharge of their duty and 
inciting a boycott against them. I was sentenced to one 
month at hard labor. There was no appeal from the decision 



THE WAR ON LIBERTY 83 

on points of fact. I was taken from my wife and family and 
business and sent to Castlebar jail, where I was put in stripes 
and placed among thieves and drunkards and criminals of the 
most degraded type. I was put to breaking stone, picking 
oakum and other burdensome work. For the first three days 
my breakfast and supper were bread and water, my dinner a 
mixture of oatmeal and Indian meal. After that I had the 
regular fare, including coarse soup three times a week, pota- 
toes twice a week, a little milk daily and a fixed amount of 
bread, but no meat. During the whole month I slept on a 
bare plank bench." 

"And your sole offense was the remark you quoted?" 
"As I'm a living man, it was. I hadn't been out of 
prison long when they were after me again. At a sale of 
cattle, which had been seized from a poor man for non- 
payment of rent, I made a speech denouncing the system of 
landlordism. I didn't utter a word more radical than you 
can hear any day at meetings in England or Scotland, or in 
the House of Commons itself. There was no thought or 
effect of inciting to crime, as was charged. It was a purely 
political speech, dealing with conditions, not persons. But 
I was sentenced to four months, without hard labor. Again 
I was put in stripes and picked oakum under guard. I con- 
formed to all the rules, until one morning a warder roughly 
ordered myself and three other political prisoners to perform 
a certain menial and degrading task, though there were 
plenty of criminals there who might properly have been sent 
to do it. We refused, were summoned before the governor 
and he condemned us to twenty-four hours on bread and 
water. A man can stand a day on starvation fare, but that 
was not the worst of the punishment. My cell was stripped 
bare, even the printed rules being taken from the wall, with 
the bench and plank bed. I was not allowed out for exer- 
cise, but was locked all the time in that bare, cramped space 
alone. No light was permitted, and as this was in January, 
I was in darkness from four o'clock in the afternoon until 
eight the next morning. At eight in the evening they put in 
the plank bed and then I could lie down. During this term 
I slept on the plank for a month. 

"I had been out of prison just a fortnight when a new 



84 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

charge was brought up. During a busy day some one called 
my attention to a policeman in the crowd in my shop. I 
asked him what he wanted, and he said he was there on duty. 
I told him he had no right there without a warrant, and led 
him to the door. He returned and took away with him a 
woman who had been standing at a counter. She was the 
wife of a man who had grabbed an evicted farm. I was 
accused of refusing to sell her goods. As a matter of fact, 
I had not seen her at all. The sentence was six months, but 
I appealed to Judge O'Connor Morris, of the County Court, 
on questions of law, and he reduced it two months. There 
was no further appeal, so I went to jail again. During the 
year I was seven months in the stripes of a criminal. I had 
done nothing but denounce a system which is cruel and unjust, 
and which the English government now confesses must be 
swept away." 

But the police are not yet satisfied, and a few weeks ago 
they tried to send this man to prison for six months. By his 
sheer, dogged will and unflinching honesty he whipped the 
agents of persecution in their own court. 

"That was the time our friend Reilly, who followed us 
this afternoon," he said, "made his bid for promotion." 

I have the record of this case, and will give it as briefly 
as may be. On August 13 Mr. Fitzgibbon attended an evic- 
tion on the estate of Lord de Freyne, so as to assist any 
tenants who needed his help. Afterward, as he could not 
learn where the next eviction would take place and as he 
wanted to be present, he followed the agent and bailiffs in 
his cart. While they drove along the country roads the agent 
was preceded and followed by a dozen policemen on bicycles, 
the district inspector and a subordinate riding in a cart. At 
a certain point in the road Mr. Fitzgibbon. finding that the 
police were blocking his path purposely, drove past the 
inspector, taking the wrong side of the road because he was 
forced to, and so got among the bicycles. There was almost 
a collision. The zealous Reilly leaped from his wheel and 
seized the horse's bridle. Mr. Fitzgibbon struck the animal 
with his whip and urged it forward, but when the inspector 
called out to him to stop he did so. The official charged him 
with trying to run down the policemen. Mr. Fitzgibbon 



THE WAR ON LIBERTY 85 

declared he had no such intention, and the explanation was 
apparently accepted. Later he was arrested, charged with 
obstructing and assaulting the police in the discharge of their 
duties. 

Conducting his own defense, Mr. Fitzgibbon had all 
the witnesses excluded from the court room except the one 
under examination. It was well he did so. Reilly swore the 
defendant struck at him with the whip, and all the policemen 
agreed that the assault and obstruction took place. Bat in 
important details the stories varied grotesquely. The crown- 
ing point was reached when the policeman riding with the 
inspector admitted that his superior had ordered him to turn 
their horse and block the road against the civilian. There 
the witness flatly contradicted the inspector and proved that 
the obstruction was a police offense. I wish there were space 
here for Mr. Fitzgibbon's summing up in his own behalf. It 
was worthy of a King's counsel. I must give one paragraph, 
if only to show how a country storekeeper in Ireland can 
defend his liberties in a hostile court: 

"Now, your Worships, what have these proceedings 
unfolded? To any impartial mind it is evident that a delib- 
erate and unlawful conspiracy has been formed to deprive 
me of my liberty. I am one of the King's subjects, and you 
have no evidence to show why an attack should be made upon 
me more than upon any other man, even yourselves upon the 
bench, to deprive me of what I value as highly as any other 
man. I do not intend to delay you at any length in prefacing 
my summary of the evidence, but I do say it is a sad state of 
things in this unfortunate country of ours when the men who 
should be the examples of law and order, of honor and 
uprightness can come into this court and tell the tales you 
have listened to, not one of which corroborated the others. 

"Respect for the law! In any well-governed country 
the aim of every citizen, and more particularly those in 
charge of the peace, should be to administer the law justly, j 
And if you want to gain respect for the law, you must admin- | 
ister it in such fashion that the poorest peasant in his cottage I 
will feel that he has its protection just as much as the lord 
in his castle. What has this case shown? It has been \ 
actually nothing more than an inquiry into the conduct of 



' 86 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

the police and their methods of dealing with political oppo- 
nents. I am certainly recognized as a political opponent of 
the present government, but that is no reason why unfair 
means should be resorted to in order to remove me." 

"The charges were dismissed," said Mr. Fitzgibbon. 
"But I suppose they will get me again some time. You saw 
this afternoon how I am dogged by the police. There is one 
on guard in front of my place of business all the time. I 
cannot go on the street or drive into the country without 
having a uniform at my heels. They even watch members 
of my family. They have followed us to> mass on Sunday 
morning." 

"But," I said, "how can you talk calmly of a system 
which may drive you into prison at any time?" 

The face of John Fitzgibbon was gravely thoughtful 
for a moment. Then he said: 

"I value my liberty as much as any man. Perhaps more 
i than others, because I have suffered, and my wife and chil- 
dren have suffered. But I will not abate one lawful act or 
word to save myself from persecution, if that act or word 
can serve the people I fight for. Some of us must endure 
that all may some day be free." 

It was said so quietly and simply that I could not reply 
for a moment. But I was curious to know how far these 
experiences had embittered this man. 

"Supposing that the land question were settled and gov- 
ernment abuses abolished," I asked, "would it be possible for 
England to win back the loyalty of Ireland?" 

A look of whimsical despair showed in his face. 

"God bless you," he said, "it's more to England's 
service than ours to give us justice. I and men like me are 
the best friends England has, did the fools but realize it. 
We risk our fortunes and our liberties to bring about a settle- 
ment of this question. They know that the settlement will 
benefit them, and they imprison us. YetT believe that when 
justice is done to Ireland the empire will have no more loyal 
supporters than those the government is persecuting to-day. 
There is not on the face of the earth a more peaceable race 
than the Irish, no- race more forgiving, none more capable 
of affection where it is deserved." 



THE WAR ON LIBERTY 87 

One thing is clear, England is better served by men like 
John Fitzgibbon than Ireland is by England's Lord Lieu- 
tenants. 

For a further understanding of what coercion in Ireland 
means, I commend study of another case against John Fitz- 
gibbon. He has served four terms of imprisonment, and 
may, therefore, be taken as a type of the "hardened crimi- 
nal." It will be interesting to examine one of the recent 
crimes which his Majesty's government thought so heinous 
as to merit severe penalty. 

( For utterances made at a public meeting at Gortaganny 
on January 12, 1902, Mr. Fitzgibbon was condemned by 
Dublin Castle magistrates. He appealed, on the ground of 
new evidence, and on March 17 his case was reviewed by 
Judge Morris. With the utmost indifference to his own fate 
he simply addressed the court on behalf of the oppressed 
tenants. For simple, touching eloquence and unselfish devo^ 
tion his speech was a little masterpiece. A few paragraphs 
will illustrate the stamp of the man whom the government 
would make a felon : 

"The case to be presented to you," he said, "is not so 
much in my own behalf as in behalf of the tenants. I have 
no desire to> go to prison again, as, if I am convicted, this 
will be my fourth term in jail. There is no man more 
attached to his home and family than I am. Yet I do not 
present this case with a view to lessening the sentence imposed 
upon me by the lower court. My object will be to place 
before your Honor the true facts leading up to the action 
condemned." 

I have described the campaign instituted by the tenants 
of the de Freyne and Murphy estates. Living in abject 
misery within sight of the prosperous tenants on the Dillon 
estate, which was purchased by the Congested Districts 
Board, these men determined to agitate for a reduction in 
their own rents. Mr. Fitzgibbon tried to prevent a general 
refusal to pay rent. He failed, and then was in duty bound 
to 1 assist in the campaign. The Crown Prosecutor charged 
that "other means" should have been resorted to, "but," said 
Mr. Fitzgibbon, "I will show your Honor that I practically 



88 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

exhausted all other means before I took part in these radical 
measures." 

Beginning with 1894, when he made a personal appeal 
to Chief Secretary John Morley, Mr. Fitzgibbon described 
the efforts he had made during the succeeding years to aid 
the unfortunate tenants. He made strong recommendations 
as a witness before a committee of the House of Commons 
in 1896. Even as late as the summer of 1901 he tried again. 
Learning that Chief Secretary Wyndham was on a secret 
visit to Castlerea, the merchant called on him. 

"I wanted to see," he said, "what could be done for 
these poor tenants or whether there was any hope for their 
cause. I went to Mr. Wyndham to give him information 
which I thought he would be glad to receive. His secretary 
asked my name and business, which I gave promptly. x-\fter 
a few minutes I was told Mr. Wyndham was in a great hurry 
and could not see me, SO' I could do nothing more than send 
him a copy of the evidence I gave in the House of Commons. 
I never heard from Mr. Wyndham, except through the pres- 
ent proceedings to put me in prison. I just mention this to 
show that it is a foolish idea to think Irishmen need not go 
beyond the ordinary means of drawing attention to Irish 
grievances. Some agitation similar to the one we are 
engaged in at present on these estates is absolutely necessary 
before you can fasten on the people who undertake to know 
our business better than we do ourselves." 

After picturing in vivid terms the wretched condition of 
the tenants for whom he was fighting, the defendant finished 
thus: 

"If you see your way to confine me in Sligo jail for 
trying to improve the condition of these poor people, I shall 
go cheerfully, because I believe that proceedings of this kind 
and the imprisonment of men who, if properly treated, would 
be as law-abiding as any Englishmen, will mean another step 
in solving the Irish land question." 

Now, the most remarkable feature of the case was this : 
Mr. Fitzgibbon was condemned not for the speech of Jan- 
uary 12, which was the only one mentioned in the summons, 
but for the reason that violent speeches were made at pre- 
vious meetings by other persons. Judge Morris explained 




A PRETTY IRISH COTTAGE. 




SPINNING. 



THE WAR ON LIBERTY 89 

this remarkable provision of the coercion laws with great 
unction. He said: 

"I am not at all surprised that Mr. Fitzgibbon and 
Mr. Webb (another defendant) think it a hardship and 
injustice that previous assemblies of the same kind as that of 
January 1 2 are taken in evidence in reference to the meeting 
named. But that is the law and common sense — the acts and 
speeches at the previous meetings are admissible as showing 
the character and application of the meeting named in the 
charge." 

The judge then went over in detail the records of meet- 
ings held on November 10, November 17 and December 29, 
1 90 1. At the first u a very violent speech" was made by 
Conor O'Kelly, M. P. But mark the judicial reference to the 
defendant: 

"On that occasion Mr. Fitzgibbon made a speech — and that is 
the only evidence I will admit against him — to which no great 
exception could be taken. Really there was not very much in that 
speech. On November 17 he said the people were to keep a tight 
hold of the money in their pockets. There is also an observation 
about grabbers and talk about striking blows, fighting and so on. 
That is not a very bad speech. On December 29 Mr. Webb said they 
would light a fire which the de Freynes and Murphys would not 
quench. [No speech by Mr. Fitzgibbon.] 

"Now, if the meeting of January 12 stood alone, I think there 
would be very little to complain against these gentlemen; but, of 
course, the law officers of the Crown know perfectly well that all 
these antecedent meetings are evidence respecting the meeting of 
January 12. On January 12 Mr. Fitzgibbon made some strong 
remarks about appeals taken from me to the Judge of Assize. 
There was no very strong observation, but they talked about a fight 
and not minding the plank bed in prison, and they said Lord de 
Freyne and others would have to bundle and go. All these assem- 
blies, and what took place after them, and the speeches made at 
them must be taken, one and all, as part of what took place on Jan- 
uary 12, as showing the quality and character of the meeting." \ 

From these judicial remarks it is plain that Mr. Fitz- 
gibbon was condemned, not for what he said himself — that 
was trifling, the judge admitted — but for the speeches of 
Conor O'Kelly and others, and the acts of meetings held 
months before that named in the summons. Judge Morris 
continued with a remarkable denunciation of the land pur- 
chase schemes carried out under the law. Indeed, he trans- 
gressed himself the laws which he invoked against the prison- 
ers. Furthermore, he said: 



9 o PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

"I admired Mr. Fitzgibbon's speech in court very much, 
and with a great deal of it I thoroughly agree. In this coun- 
try abuses grow up, and concessions, as a rule, are extorted 
only by agitation. That has been the history of this country 
since 1782." 

Nevertheless, the defendants had to suffer for adopting 
means which the judge confessed were necessary. He con- 
firmed the sentence of the castle magistrates — two months 
in prison and bail for two months more. 

"Will these gentlemen consent to find bail?" he asked. 

"Oh, no, your Honor," replied Mr. Fitzgibbon. "It 
just means imprisonment for four months." 

The answer illustrates the spirit of the men who are 
fighting the battles of the tenants. By obtaining bail Mr. 
Fitzgibbon might have saved himself two months' imprison- 
ment. He preferred to suffer rather than admit, by giving 
bail, that he had transgressed the law. Surely this honest 
country merchant is a type of the "village Hampden," whom 
it is folly to attempt to crush. He served his four months in 
prison, but every day he spent in a cell struck off many days 
from the time which stands between Ireland oppressed and 
Ireland free. 



XII 
*WHAT COERCION IS 

As this letter is written, nearly fifty prominent Irishmen 
are in prison or awaiting trial for political offenses, and the 
Lord Lieutenant only knows how many more are bound 
thither. Let the reader who is tired of the dry details of the 
land question ponder on this interesting fact for a little. 
According to American law, these men have committed no 
crimes. The statutes under which Englishmen enjoy liberty 
do not accuse them. They are stamped criminals because 
they dared to denounce legalized robbery and agitate for 
legal remedy. They are subjected to confinement, hardship 
and degradation because they have talked politics, advised 
co-operation against injustice and assailed a rotten system of 
spoliation. 

This is the fruit of one hundred years of "union." It 
is not enough that Ireland should be governed by foreigners 
— for such in truth the English are by their own proud 
admission; it is not enough that her people should have 
suffered grievously by class laws, until the very soil cries out 
in agony; but to this must be added a campaign against 
liberty, and into the wounds of conquest and injustice must 
be rubbed the salt of insolence and tyranny. 

Representative public men of Ireland recently visited 
America, and at their meetings appeals were made for a 
defense fund. It was declared that the British government 
was seeking, through a system of "coercion," to- crush the 
agitation for justice. What did this mean? The word is 
simple enough. Our laws apply coercion every day. The 
thief, the murderer, the criminal of whatever sort, feels the 
heavy hand of society upon his shoulder and hears the grim 
order, "Stop !" But in Ireland who are coerced, and why 
I append a list of some of the victims at this date. Some 
are in prison, others are awaiting trial or sentence, some have 

*This chapter was written in Dublin, in January, 1903. 

91 



9 2 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

been released after serving their terms, but all the cases are 
actually of last year, 1902 : 

WILLIAM H. K. KEDMOND, M. P., six months. 

MICHAEL BEDDY. M. P., seven months. 

WILLIAM DUFFY, M. P., three months. 

JOHISr ROCHE* M. P., four months' hard labor; two months 
added in default of bail; and again summoned. 

J. P. FABEELL, M. P., proprietor of the Longford Leader, nve 
months' hard labor. . 

P. A. McHUGH, M. P., editor oi the Shgo Champion, two 
months ; had already served three months. 

JOHN O'DONNELL. M. P., six months; fifth term m prison. 

E HAVILAND-BUBKE, M. P.. one month hard l^or 

WILLIAM LOWBY, chairman of Bier Poor Law Board, nve 

months. 

MICHAEL HOGAN, three months. 

M GLENXOX. United Irish League organizer, three months. 

DANIEL POWELL, editor of the Midland Tribune, tour 

m0I1 DENIS KILBBIDE, ex-M. P., now serving four months; just 
tried and sentenced to four months more. 

CAEEOLL NAGLE, six weeks. 

JAMES LYNAM, six months. 

EODOLPHUS MAKER, two months. 

JOSEPH GAXTLEY. two months. 

THOMAS SEABSON. six weeks. 

JAMES MURNANE, rive weeks. . 

J. A. O'SULLIYAX, United Irish League organizer, three 

months. 

AXDEEW HOLOHAX. six weeks. 

T McCAKTIIY. editor of the Irish People, two months. 

T O'DWYEE, publisher of the Irish People, two months. 

STEPHEN HOLLAND, foreman printer of the Irish Feople, 

0116 T FLANAGAN. J. P.. Corofin. tour months" hard labor; driven 
insane by imprisonment ; now in Limerick Lunatic Asylum. 

MAETIN FINNEETY, six months' hard labor. 

JOHN LOIIAN. three months' hard labor; two months added 

in default of bail. 

JAMES KILMAETIN. three months. 

S. P. HAEEIS. six months. 

DAVID SHEEHAN. four months. 

B. McTEENAN. two months' hard labor. 

M. O'DWYEE, five months. 

H LYNAM, editor of the Waterford Star, two months. 

P.' J. EAHILLY, United Irish League organizer, summoned tor 

ria J. BUCKLEY, proprietor of the Limerick Leader, ten months' 

hard DENIS JOHNSTON, served five months; recently summoned 
on a new charge. 

J. F. O'KEEFE, summoned. 



WHAT COERCION IS 93 

P. J. MOXAGHAX, summoned. 
MICHAEL GAERICIC summoned. 
J. G. GUILTY, awaiting sentence. 
PATRICK FITZPATEICK, two months' hard labor. 
THOMAS LARKIX, two months. 
JOHX MITCHELL, two months' hard labor. 
MPS. AXXE O'MAHOXY, a widow, proprietor of the Water- 
ford Star, two months. 

Now, what crimes had these men — and this widow — 
committed? I am not able, unfortunately, to give the 
charges in each case, but I am assured by men in whom I 
have the highest confidence that not one of these persons by 
act or word transgressed the ordinary laws recognized by the 
courts and society. They are, in fact, victims of a special 
statute passed with the distinct purpose of crushing free 
speech and the free press, the provisions of the statute being 
enforced by a system of summary trial and conviction. 
I have called it martial law, and such it is in effect, though 
not in name. The official title is "Criminal Law and 
Procedure (Ireland) Act, 1887," better known as the 
Crimes Act. In the hands of the English administrators it 
is an ingenious instrument of oppression. Technically, it is 
directed against those who conspire to compel or induce any 
person "not to let, hire, use or occupy any land, or not to 
deal with, work for or hire any person or persons in the 
ordinary course of trade"; against those "who shall wrong- 
fully and without legal authority use violence or intimida- 
tion" toward any person; against those who take part in any 
riot or unlawful assembly, or who "incite any other person 
to commit any of the offenses hereinbefore mentioned." 

In plain terms, as will be seen, the act is intended to 
discourage boycotting, intimidation and violence against those 
who take advantage of the unjust land laws and assist in 
depriving the people of their lands. So far so good. These 
crimes are abhorrent to every lover of fair play, and should 
be punished by due process of law. But in the last para- 
graph quoted the authorities have a weapon placed in their 
hands by which they can thrust into prison any person 
obnoxious to themselves or their friends, provided he is brave 
enough to make a speech or write an article denouncing the 
land system. In the act the term "intimidation" is defined 



94 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

as including "any words or acts intended and calculated to 
put any person in fear of any injury or danger to himself, or 
to any member of his family, or to any person in his employ- 
ment, or in fear of any injury to or loss of property, business, 
employment or means of living." This is elastic enough, 
surely. But add the paragraph about "inciting" to these acts, 
and the law becomes a sweeping prohibition of ordinary 
political discussion. For, it should be explained, it is not 
necessary to prove that any person has actually been placed 
in fear of loss or injury. In scores of cases the accused is 
charged with uttering words "calculated to intimidate persons 
unknown," and scores of convictions have been obtained 
where it was not shown that any person presumably con- 
cerned ever heard of or read the expressions referred to. 
Hence men have been sent to prison for expressing by voice 
or pen sentiments which "intimidated" persons who were 
quite ignorant of the utterances. 

Yet the amazing substance of the law is less obnoxious 
to free institutions, if that is possible, than the manner of its 
administration. The Crimes Act, while always available, is 
put in force by proclamation. When, therefore, political 
opposition to the government becomes so active in any district 
that the authorities deem it expedient to check public discus- 
sion, that district is "proclaimed" by the Lord Lieutenant 
and his Privy Council. By simply writing his noble name at 
the end of a proclamation he imposes upon the obnoxious 
district these conditions: 

Trial by jury suspended. 

Armed police attend every public meeting, taking notes 
of the speeches. 

Every utterance in an opposition newspaper is subjected 
to scrutiny, and every sentence which can be construed as 
unlawful, under the astounding terms of the Crimes Act, is 
made an excuse for prosecution. 

The police furnish the witnesses. 

The persons accused are tried by two magistrates, who 
are appointed, paid and removable by Dublin Castle. 

The prosecutor is an official sent to the scene of trial by 
Dublin Castle. 

The castle magistrates have summary jurisdiction, and 



WHAT COERCION IS 95 

almost invariably condemn the prisoners, the maximum sen- 
tence being six months' hard labor. 

I have said that this in effect is martial law, and I give 
these facts in support of the statement. If further proof is 
needed, let me add something else. The castle magistrates, 
through a grotesque revival of a long obsolete statute, can 
summarily bring before them any person they choose and 
put him under bonds. An act passed in the reign of Edward 
III, at a "Parliament held at Westminster on the Sunday 
next before the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, A. D. 
1360-61," is the instrument. By it magistrates are empow- 
ered to "take and arrest all those that they may find by indict- 
ment or by suspicion and to put them in prison, and to take 
all of them that be of good fame, where they shall be found, 
sufficient surety and mainprise for their good behavior toward 
the King and his people, and others duly to punish." It is 
worthy of casual notice that the act originally read, as here 
translated from the archaic French, "Touz ceux qui sont de 
bone fame." Of course, it meant "all those who are not of 
good fame," and the missing word was easily supplied. 

When a too free-spoken man is arraigned under this act 
he cannot defend himself. Judge Gibson, in the case of Rice 
vs. Halpin, February 26, 1901, said: "The authorities com- 
pel us to decide that in the case of sureties for good behavior 
evidence on behalf of the defendant cannot be heard. The 
result is most unfortunate." 

If there were space, I could quote a dozen judges who, 
in. addressing grand juries recently, commented upon the 
extraordinary absence of crime. Yet the Lord Lieutenant 
has proclaimed twenty-one of the thirty-two counties of Ire- 
land, including the city of Dublin, and in these twenty-one 
counties the Crimes Act form of martial law is in force. A 
word must be added concerning the amazing powers of the 
police. The Royal Irish Constabulary is virtually a body of 
soldiers. This huge force, which is paid for by the Irish 
people, is controlled absolutely from London, through Dublin 
Castle. Detachments are quartered in towns and villages as 
-ordered from headquarters. 

These military police have powers which in free coun- 
tries, such as America and England, are vested only in the 



96 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

courts and are hedged about with many legal restrictions. 
They can summarily enter any newspaper office or news-stand 
and confiscate such papers as they desire. They can, without 
proclamation, prohibit any meeting. They can force their 
way into any public gathering, drag the speakers from the 
platform and disperse the citizens present, using force if they 
so desire. In a word, the English police in Ireland can sup- 
press free speech at will. The people have only two means 
of meeting this power : They can submit or they can suffer 
imprisonment. It is a proof of the courage and devotion of 
the leaders that many of them persist in denouncing injustice 
and accept cheerfully the penalties. 

I have tried to show that coercion in Ireland is a system 
which would cause Englishmen to rise up and sweep the 
government out of existence. They would not submit for a 
single day to the tyranny which their officials inflict upon the 
Irish people. In support of this statement I quote Mr. T. W. 
Russell, M. P., who, as I have stated, is a Scotchman, a 
Protestant and an opponent of Home Rule. In a speech at 
Leith, Scotland, he described the conditions in the west of 
Ireland, due to the atrocious land system, declaring that it 
"is a sin against God's law — a crime against humanity." 
He continued : 

"But if I said this in County Mayo I should be haled 
before two Crimes Act magistrates. I should get three 
months with hard labor for saying it, and I should get three 
additional months if I failed to give bail that I would not 
say it again. This is an absolutely correct description of the 
facts and of the law. Gentlemen, it is a state of affairs such 
as this which drives Irish-born men to frenzy, which makes 
a mere 'unspeakable Scot' like myself hang his head in shame 
when he thinks of what is called the government of Ireland." 

This is the opinion of a member of the British Parlia- 
ment, a man who for years has fought for the maintenance 
of the Union as against Home Rule. I shall now give some 
specific instances showing how coercion is applied. First let 
me illustrate the attitude of some of the judges toward liti- 
gants, as set forth in official reports. At Castlerea, a few 
weeks ago, Judge O'Connor Morris commented on some 
eviction cases before him. Certain tenants on the de Freyne 




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WHAT COERCION IS 97 

and Murphy estates had refused to pay rents demanded. 
Their excuse was that the rents were higher than the yearly 
purchase instalments paid by tenants on the Dillon estate, 
which had been bought by the Congested Districts Board and 
was being resold to the farmers. Their purpose was, as 
explained in previous letters, to bring the land question to a 
focus and compel the attention, of the government. This is 
how Judge Morris denounced "land purchase," admittedly 
the only solution of the problem, and declared from the bench 
it would be worthless : 

"In my opinion, these tenants have a great and legiti- 
mate grievance. It is due directly to the act of the executive 
government, which chose what is called the selling of the 
Dillon estate under a system absolutely falsely called land 
purchase. But this is not the way to remedy the grievance — 
stopping their rents and robbing the landlords. * * * 
My opinion is there will be no land conference, and if there 
were, it would end in a battle of smoke. It would be abso- 
lutely worthless. Now, put that idea out of your head. 
* * * This has reference to all the tenants in Ireland, 
but particularly the tenants of this estate. My strong advice 
to them, poor fools, is not to listen to ridiculous talk, but 
simply to go about their business and till their farms and pay 
their rents like honest men." 

A grand jury at Mullingar, County Westmeath, two 
months ago presented to Judge Curran a resolution respect- 
fully protesting against the proclamation of the county under 
the Crimes Act. The following dialogue ensued, as officially 
reported : 

Judge Curran — "This resolution is altogether outside your 
business. Talking about a proclamation ! There are twenty-three 
of you there, and let any man stand forward and say he has been 
coerced in any way. Don't be talking about coercion. It is all 
hum/bug! There is your precious resolution for you!" [The judge 
then tore up the resolution and threw the pieces of paper toward 
the grand jury.] 

A Juror — "Might I say one word, your Honor?" 

Judge Curran — "No; you are all discharged." 

The Juror — "You said in your charge to us that there is boy- 
cotting in the county. Let us know one single instance." 

Judge Curran — "You are discharged now as a grand jury, and 
if you talk in court I'll send you to jail." 

Here are two charming examples of the judicial tem- 

7 : , 



9* PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

perament as observed in the courts which try Irishmen. 
And, of course, these judges are exempt from the provisions 
of the Crimes Act. It would never do to hint that Judge 
Morris to the tenants and Judge Curran to the grand jury 
were guilty of intimidation. For English comment on the 
latter case I quote from the London Speaker : 

"It may be absurd to expect impartial conduct and 
judicial pronouncements from the Irish county court judges ; 
but as members of a learned profession they might, at least, 
behave like gentlemen." 

They might, indeed. But it is unfortunately true that 
some officials of the English government in Ireland do not 
consider that in their relations with the people they are bound 
by the ordinary obligations of courtesy and justice. 

There are many well-meaning folk who have only one 
reply to all appeals made in behalf of Ireland, whether for 
equitable land laws, self-government or any other measure 
of justice long denied. 

"Why is not Ireland submissive to the laws of the 
empire?" they say. "How can a people who are notoriously 
disloyal properly demand favor from a government toward 
which they evince only insolence and hatred?" 

It is true enough that Ireland is disloyal. No other 
nation in the world exhibits such a terrible picture — virtually 
a whole people openly sympathizing with the armed enemies 
of the established government, rejoicing in the defeat of the 
imperial arms and sorrowing for the downfall of the forces 
which threatened the imperial supremacy. But upon whom 
does this unhappy condition reflect dishonor? No blood tie 
binds the Irish and the Boers, while there are many reasons 
for peaceful union between the Irish and the British. Is it 
reasonable to suppose that some inborn fanaticism has led 
them to turn their backs upon their natural allies and applaud 
the victories of aliens? This disloyalty is abnormal. The 
only just course is to inquire into the causes which underlie it. 
It is possible to conceive conditions wherein disloyalty is the 
only attitude left for a self-respecting people. In such case, 
should not criticism be directed at the system which forces 
men into political rebellion rather than at the rebels them- 
selves ? 



WHAT COERCION IS 99 

While many features of English government in Ireland 
are incitements to opposition, we are dealing here particularly 
with coercion, that ingenious system of exasperation which is 
daily widening the breach between the races. Coercion, as 
shown, is the suspension of ordinary forms of law and the 
substitution, under the cover of special statutes, of what is 
practically martial law. This system is inflicted on a country 
which is at peace, and where the records of the courts show 
that crime is proportionately less than in England itself. 
Does this appeal to the fair-minded man as an incentive to 
loyalty ? 

The Irish people to-day are subject to courts whose 
prejudice is apparent, and they have been stripped of every 
valuable protection guaranteed by the English law to the 
subject. The great engine of coercion under the courts is 
the Royal Irish Constabulary, an organized military garrison 
responsible solely to London, and enforcing their will upon 
the people by armed force. The police are censors of the 
newspapers. The police have control over public meetings. 
The police decide whether any gathering is lawful or unlaw- 
ful. The police note every public utterance and declare it 
permissible or not, as pleases them. The police make the 
arrests, conduct the prosecutions and furnish the witnesses. 
The testimony is passed upon and the sentences are inflicted, 
without authority of juries, by police judges. 

But we have not quite finished the tale of the police 
functions, for sometimes they furnish the crimes, too. There 
are cases on record where innocent men have been sent to 
penal servitude for crimes committed by policemen who 
sought promotion by making records for "efficiency." The 
most notorious cases of this kind were those involving Ser- 
geant Sheridan, who was naturally regarded as one of the 
most useful officers in the constabulary. He was a member 
of the force for twenty years, and won promotion by his 
activity in making arrests and obtaining convictions. But 
justice overtook him at last, and even Englishmen were hor- 
rified to learn that in many cases he and his associates had 
sworn away the liberties of innocent men, charging them 
with crimes committed by the police. 

An aged tramp — a man who could hardly walk and was 



ioo PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

nearly blind — was the unconscious means of Sheridan's undo- 
ing. The policeman accused him of nailing a threatening 
notice on the gate of a certain man, and swore that he had 
seen the crime. Under cross-examination it was proved that 
it was physically impossible for the witness to have seen the 
act from the place he said he occupied. The prisoner was 
discharged. The incident started an inquiry, and it was 
proved that in at least three previous cases innocent men had 
suffered. Daniel McGoohan was convicted in Sligo in 1897 
of the cowardly crime of maiming cattle. This trial, by the 
way, illustrates the tactics of the government when the Coer- 
cion Act is not operative. A regular panel of jurors was sum- 
moned, but no fewer than sixty of them were ordered to "stand 
aside" by the Crown Prosecutor. No reason was given. 
The government simply took this means of getting a jury that 
would convict. It did convict, and McGoohan was sent into 
penal servitude for two years. 

Cornelius Bray was sentenced to three years' penal servi- 
tude on a charge of burning a hayrick. 

Patrick Murphy got six months at hard labor on the 
charge of maliciously killing a donkey. 

Every one of these crimes was committed by policemen, 
who deliberately swore away the liberties of innocent men. 
The government was forced to act. McGoohan was released, 
and received $500 as compensation for his sufferings. Bray 
was freed, but soon died, and his mother receives a pension of 
$2.50 a week. Murphy was restored to his family and 
accepted $125 damages. 

The same police force is as active to-day in suppressing 
free speech, gagging the press and swearing men into prison 
on charges of "intimidation" in political speeches. Does the 
record contain much to make loyalty an obligation on the 
Irish people? These are the tactics which T. W. Russell has 
said "drive Irishmen to frenzy" and make loyalists like him 
hide their heads in shame. 

But the injustice is not always so serious. The stupidity 
of some of the governing class leads them into acts which 
cannot accomplish any good to any one, and seem designed 
only to exasperate needlessly the citizens of the country. I 
came across such a case when visiting the County Mayo court 



WHAT COERCION IS 101 

house at Castlebar recently. The County Council announced 
a meeting of the body to transact regular business. Inci- 
dentally, it was proposed to present to William O'Brien 
addresses of commendation. Now, the court house was built, 
of course, and is maintained by the public funds, and the 
members of the County Council are elected by the people who 
pay the taxes. Under the circumstances, it would seem that 
the Council might transact any lawful business in their cham- 
ber. But under an old statute, which was incorporated in the 
Local Government Act, the actual custody of the court house 
is vested in the High Sheriff of the county. This official in 
Mayo is Sheriff Bingham, a son of Lord Lucan, one of the 
great landlords. From him the secretary received the fol- 
lowing remarkable letter: 

"July 30, 1902. 
"Sir: I see by the papers that a meeting of the Mayo County 
Council is to be held in the court house at Castlebar on Saturday, 
August 2, for the purpose of presenting an address to Mr. William 
O'Brien, M. P. As from information I have received, I have come 
to the conclusion that this meeting will partake of the nature of a 
political demonstration, I feel it my duty to write and inform you 
that such would be an improper and illegal use of the court house. 
"Being, as High Sheriff, responsible for the custody and con- 
trol of the building, I write, therefore, to give you notice that I am 
unable to permit its use for any such purpose. I remain, 
"Yours faithfully, 

"BINGHAM, High Sheriff." 

On the day announced for the meeting, sixty policemen, 
carrying rifles, took possession of the chamber of the duly 
elected County Council. This armed force prevented the 
meeting of the people's representatives in the building sup- 
ported by their taxes. 

Yet the police cannot always be accused of activity. 
When I first called upon T. W. Russell, M. P., in Dublin, 
he was under the care of a doctor, having been assaulted by 
an Anti-Home Rule mob in Dromore, County Down, 
although he is an Anti-Home Ruler himself. The story of 
his adventure will illustrate how the police, so vigilant in 
suppressing the liberties of the people, deal with real crime. 

Mr. Russell addressed a meeting of Ulster farmers on 
November 19 regarding the land problem. Information 
reached him in advance that men had been hired to break up 
the gathering, and he requested the aid of the police in pre- 



102 PROBLEM OF THE LAND 

serving order. No attention was paid to this. The meeting 
began early in the evening. As soon as Mr. Russell rose to 
speak gangs of rowdies surrounded the building, making 
deafening noises with drums. Nevertheless, the meeting was 
continued to the end. When Mr. Russell and his friends left 
the hall they found the street filled with a rioting mob. 
They took refuge in a store, but rather than expose the shop- 
keeper to violence they left a few moments later. Mr. Rus- 
sell was lifted into a wagon, and the driver tried to* force his 
way through the mob. Stones and bricks showered upon 
them, and Mr. Russell was knocked senseless. There were a 
score of policemen within sight of the disturbance, but only 
one of them made any attempt to protect the assaulted men. 
It is indeed a pity that the Irish people are not loyal and 
do not subscribe with enthusiasm to English rule. But some 
explanation of their attitude may be found in the fact that 
about the only visible representatives of government in the 
country are courts which throttle liberty and a police force 
which is used as an instrument of the most vindictive oppres- 
sion. 



+■ 



THE LAND PROBLEM 
SOLVED 

XIII 
*AFTER SEVEN YEARS 

Seven years ago the Philadelphia North American sent 
a correspondent to Ireland to report upon the social, indus- 
trial and political conditions which at that time made the 
century-old "Irish question" an acute problem. To investi- 
gate the matter at close range — first for the benefit of the 
people of Ireland and their kin in America, but more particu- 
larly for the enlightenment of the American public as a whole 
■ — the newspaper sent a reporter to the scene. For more than 
a month the writer traveled in Ireland. He visited cities, 
towns, villages and hamlets, and penetrated into the sparsely 
settled country districts. He interviewed priests and peas- 
ants, business men, politicians, artisans. He talked with mer- 
chants behind the counter, farmers in the furrow, women at 
the spinning wheel, laborers on the roadside. He was in 
stores and churches, in homes of plenty and abodes of want. 
He saw that amazing problem of the land, the Nemesis of 
statesmen, the scourge of a people, unroll before him as he 
traversed the green but desolated island. He found patriot- 
ism a crime, free speech a prison offense. He saw members of 
Parliament in jail, and talked to respected merchants whose 

*This chapter was written in Dublin in July, 1909. 

103 



104 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

hands were scarred with the degrading labor of the prison 
yard. He traveled over scores of miles of fertile land which 
knew no life except scattered herds of rough Irish cattle and 
their silent keepers, and within an hour of such scenes found 
crowded humanity living on stony hillsides, slaving, suffering, 
slowly dying. 

It was a ghastly picture — not, of course, typical of Ire- 
land as a whole, but typical of a great part of the land. 
There were huge tracts of the country where peace and plenty 
have shed their blessings for many years, and where, as a 
result, despairing revolt and savage reprisal were hardly 
known. But the extent of the injustice was vast. Not thou- 
sands, but hundreds of thousands of persons existed amid 
surroundings of unexampled misery, always struggling, 
always under the edge of the shadow of starvation. And all 
through no fault of their own. As the letters and photo- 
graphs published seven years ago made plain, these people 
were victims of a system of oppression and economic slavery. 
The articles cited the testimony not alone of Irishmen, but of 
English statesmen, who declared that the misrule of Ireland, 
particularly in regard to its atrocious land system, was alone 
responsible for the misery of a people naturally thrifty, intel- 
ligent and peace-loving. After completing a tour of the dis- 
tricts where injustice and its evil results were most apparent, 
and after having studied conditions and their causes at first 
hand, the writer summed up as follows the state of affairs in 
Ireland in 1902 : 

Political — Widespread hatred and distrust of England. 
Peace insured by an armed garrison. A police force, paid by 
the people of Ireland, but controlled absolutely from London, 
scattered over the whole island, with judicial as well as ad- 
ministrative powers. "Coercion" enforced in twenty-one of 
the thirty-two counties, whereby free speech is suppressed, 
trial by jury suspended and public discussion, if displeasing 
to officials, results in arbitrary imprisonment. In the British 
Parliament the balance of power held by the Irish mem- 
bers, who are united in a determination to obstruct the 
government at every turn. In Ireland the United Irish 
League spreading its organization everywhere, its plat- 
form embracing the abolition of landlordism through the 
compulsory sale of lands and, ultimately, the establishment 
of national self-government. 

Economic — The nation is dying by inches. Every year 
the population grows less. In 1800 it was 4,000,000, in 1847 



AFTER SEVEN YEARS 105 

nearly 9,000,000; now it is 4,456,000. Emigration is cease- 
less. The young' and vigorous of the race are fleeing from 
the island as if there were a blight. In the last fifty years 
3,850,000 have fled from the land of their birth. Nowhere, 
save in a few restricted farming and manufacturing dis- 
tricts, is there a condition worthy to be called prosperity. 
Agriculture is the employment of eight-tenths of the popu- 
lation, and for hundreds of thousands of these agriculture 
spells destitution. Most of these exist only through con- 
tributions from relatives in America and England. In 
thousands upon thousands of families the men and boys 
must spend six months of the year in England in order to 
earn enough money to carry the families through the win- 
ter. In a word, the Irish in Ireland— the countless victims 
of the system at least — are kept alive by the Irish who have 
been driven to other lands. 

This recital of conditions was based upon personal 
investigation and observation, and it was proved by official 
reports and statistics. The causes were treated as exhaust- 
ively as the limitations of newspaper articles would permit. 
It was shown that conquest and confiscation had been merci- 
lessly invoked against the Irish people until they, the natural 
and just owners of the land, had been reduced to economic 
serfdom, dependent virtually upon the charity of their mas- 
ters, and usually certain to find it wanting. From historical 
documents it was made clear that the land was taken by force 
from the people in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
and conferred upon adventurers and titled favorites of the 
sovereigns. The means used were confiscation, colonization, 
seizure in time of war and as reprisal by the victors and, 
finally, penal laws, which upon religious grounds stripped 
most of the inhabitants of nearly every right enjoyed by citi- 
zens under free government. Out of these unnatural methods 
of acquiring land grew the monstrous evil of absentee land- 
lordism, and this in turn bred new injustices. The very 
severity of the laws that were brought into operation against 
the Irish so hampered the owners living in England that they 
sublet their Irish estates to middlemen, who ground down the 
hapless peasantry at will. 

An important explanation then made — one that is vital 
to an understanding of the problem — was the radical differ- 
ence between landlordism in Ireland and landlordism in Eng- 
land. (See Chapter 111.) In these conditions were to be 
found the cause of the wretched land wars, of the long. 



106 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

bitter campaign against landlordism, with its record of blood 
and misery. In 1870 came the first ray of light in the dark 
record, when Gladstone established the main principle of 
dual ownership — that the tenant's industry created for him a 
certain proprietary interest in the land he tilled. The first 
legislation — like all that has followed it — was imperfect. 
The savage land war of 1879-80 showed how much of 
mediaeval injustice still persisted. But the barriers were 
crumbling. Land purchase acts followed, the most notable 
being in 1 88 1 and 1903, and with these the death-knell of 
Irish landlordism was sounded. The British government is 
now engaged, upon a huge scale, in buying the great estates 
and establishing the tenants upon small farms. The new 
terms, though in some cases too high, are infinitely more 
advantageous than the old. Tenants who paid $50 a year 
rent, with no hope in the future and the certainty of an 
increased demand, now occupy the same ground as owners, 
paying the purchase price and interest at the rate of $30 to 

$35 a y £ar - 

Seven years ago it was predicted that a change was in 
sight. The change came, and progress has been steady ever 
since. Again the writer has visited Ireland to see for himself 
how the people are living and what measure of justice they 
have won. Let it be said at once that the change is nothing 
short of marvelous. It was a dark picture seven years ago, 
but that picture is fading. Seven years is a brief span in the 
life of a nation, and this generation will not see the last of 
injustice. But the reformation has begun. Thousands upon 
thousands of families which were suffering want are now con- 
tented and near to prosperity. Many evils have been wiped 
out and others are marked to go. In the succeeding articles 
we are to see a new Ireland — a nation once more on the 
upgrade. 

The prediction made in 1902 that the government 
would be compelled to take drastic action was soon verified. 
Within a year the Wyndham Land Purchase Act was passed, 
increasing the powers of bodies engaged in undoing the 
wrongs of centuries, and for seven years these wise reforms 
have been in operation. What they have accomplished it is 
the purpose of the present investigation to set forth. 



AFTER SEVEN YEARS 107 

To the student of history — and, indeed, to anyone who 
has the faintest interest in human progress — the story of Ire- 
land must be fascinating. Americans particularly should find 
it attractive, not only because so large a proportion of them 
have Irish blood, but because Ireland still suffers many 
of the disabilities against which the American colonies 
revolted in 1775. Ireland's afflictions under misrule and 
the still surviving system of bad government will be discussed 
later. These earlier letters are to deal chiefly with the 
reforms in the grotesque land system and the amazing changes 
for the better which have been wrought in the short period 
of seven years. The testimony, in the main, will be the 
writer's personal observation, for he will visit the same 
places he inspected before. But already there is evidence 
from a competent witness — a man whose inflexible opposi- 
tion to English government of Ireland during his whole life 
gives weight to his declaration — that the country has been 
lifted from despair to hope. This is John Dillon, member 
of Parliament, scholar, historian and agitator, one of the 
ablest of the leaders during a stormy generation. 

Mr. Dillon lives in one of those tall, grim, smoke- 
blackened houses which give to Dublin's old streets an 
appearance of ancient grandeur. More than a hundred 
years ago the house was occupied by a member of the Irish 
Parliament, the short-lived legislative assemblage which 
proved the justice of Home Rule but was extinguished by the 
infamously passed Act of Union in 1800. Many other 
houses in this street sheltered members of that body, and 
during the sessions the neighborhood was brilliant. Now 
the glory has departed and the mansions have settled into a 
decorous quietude. 

There was nothing to suggest the agitator, the bitter 
and ruthless foe of British misgovernment, in the figure 
which greeted me in the dim-lit library of the old house. 
Nothing more unlike a militant campaigner could be imag- 
ined than the tall, thin, studious-looking man who rose up 
among his books and extended the courteous welcome of the 
well-bred Irishman. The whole appearance of the man is 
one of scholarly refinement. He seems to be infinitely more 
at home in his deep armchair than he would be in the heat of 



io8 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

political strife; yet he is one of the most effective, as he has 
been one of the most fiery and uncompromising, of the Irish 
orators and leaders. The book-lined walls and the tables, 
littered with odd volumes and papers, make appropriate sur- 
roundings for his studious, somewhat weary-looking figure. 
His words are those of the scholar and suggest nothing of 
his stormy career. When I told him I had come to Ireland 
to learn what progress had been made since my former visit 
he expressed satisfaction. 

"I am very glad, indeed," he said. "America has heard 
much of Irish suffering and has given us such splendid sup- 
port that it is gratifying that you can take back a report of 
much good accomplished and much more to be achieved 
presently. You could not have come at a more significant 
time. The improvement since you were here last has been 
simply enormous. I can say, in all seriousness, that Ireland 
has made more progress in the last ten years than during the 
previous two hundred years." 

"That is a strong statement," was suggested. 

"But quite true," answered Mr. Dillon, calmly. "I 
need hardly remind you that the wretched land system was 
responsible for most of the misery which the poor suffered. 
Successive land purchase acts are gradually restoring the 
worse than homeless tenants to the land, and each family so 
restored becomes decently prosperous, because, for the first 
time, there is offered a chance to make a living. But I do 
not refer to this broad reform alone — to the mere fact that 
the helpless, hopeless tenants and the evicted families are 
being made independent. I refer to the spirit of the people. 
The whole face of the land is changing, and the spirit of the 
people with it. The thousands who> have been put in the 
way of making decent farms and homes have become hope- 
ful and self-reliant instead of despairing. The wretched 
habitations you described seven years ago are disappearing, 
and in their places you will find trim, comfortable cottages. 
Those families who were struggling against starvation on the 
rocky hillsides are now cultivating fertile fields. This has 
had its moral as well as its material benefits. With increased 
opportunity and independence have sprung up, naturally, 
aspirations for better living. The farm animals, which, 



AFTER SEVEN YEARS 109 

among the very poor, used to be kept in one end of the house, 
are now properly housed some distance away from the home. 
Dooryards are cleaned up and the heaps of refuse that used 
to disfigure them are swept away. Stagnant pools are 
drained, roads and fences mended, and everywhere are seen 
the marks of industry and a desire for comfort and cleanli- 
ness. All these good results have followed from the simple 
change from tenant slavery to free ownership. 

"There has been an aesthetic stimulus, too, which is 
hardly less important, I think, than the material regeneration 
from which it results. You who have seen prosperous farms 
do not need to be told how passionate is the Irish love of 
flowers. The little patch of garden in the dooryard and the 
climbing roses that often hide the porches are perfectly 
natural to the Irish country folk. Now you will see these 
evidences of contentment and of love for the beautiful on 
every hand. Families which a few years ago were so steeped 
in despair that they lived amid the most sordid surroundings 
now are not content to make a living — they must have a 
garden of flowers as well. Even commonplace incidents 
show the uplift which has come from opportunity. In many 
districts the outhouses are roofed with corrugated iron — a 
serviceable but not very picturesque material. One day a 
friend of mine suggested to a farmer that a coat of red paint 
would improve the appearance of the barn. The hint was 
taken, and the change added so much to the picturesqueness 
of the place that the idea spread. Now hundreds of the 
unsightly roofs have been painted a warm red, adding a 
touch of homelikeness to many a neighborhood." 

I suggested that another improvement would be a varia- 
tion here and there in the architecture of the houses which 
the government is building. The structures are warm and 
comfortable, but they are of the most austere plainness of 
design and of a deadly monotony in plan. 

"I advocated the use of dark-red tiling for the roofs," 
said Mr. Dillon, "but that would cost $20 or $25 more for 
each house; so slate is used. The main thing, of course, is 
to house the people at all; but it is a pity that in paying its 
long-overdue debt civilization should crush out the artistic 
spirit in those whom it benefits." 



no THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

"And what has been the effect of all this economic 
improvement," I asked, "upon the Home Rule question? It 
was my prediction seven years ago that the restoration of the 
people to the land would make self-government inevitable — 
would, in fact, hasten it. Is this the fact, or has the redress- 
ing of the land wrongs obscured the political issue?" 

"The Home Rule sentiment is stronger than ever," 
answered Mr. Dillon. "It is increasing steadily. I do not 
mean to convey that it is a burning issue at this moment. 
During the land wars it was constantly at the front. It was 
the theme of every meeting and the inspiration of every little 
revolt. But the country then was really in a state of civil 
war. The Irish people were unarmed, but they were in con- 
stant rebellion, and the clashes between them and the military 
and police were in behalf of their right of self-government, 
just as much as the battles in the American war for inde- 
pendence. The country is now at peace, awaiting the out- 
come of promised reforms. The physical conflicts are few. 
But none the less the Home Rule sentiment is growing every 
day, and it will not be denied. 

"A very subtle campaign against it was carried on some 
years ago by Sir Horace Plunkett when head of the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture. He went to* the people with the plea 
that they drop politics — that everybody should 'get together' 
and build up the country agriculturally and industrially. It 
was a very plausible program on the surface, but unfortu- 
nately to have 'no politics' in Ireland is to be anti-Nationalist. 
It was perfectly absurd to talk about men leaving politics 
aside, for to do so is to drop the Nationalist idea. There is 
no question that this propaganda influenced a good many 
persons. Plunkett established creameries and gave other 
assistance in developing farm resources, and he had, for a 
time, the very effective argument of large patronage in the 
department he ruled. But when he openly attacked one of 
our parliamentary seats and captured it for a Unionist his 
pretense of non-partisanship was exploded. His propaganda 
has collapsed, and Home Rule is still the living issue. He 
used to boast that he would kill Home Rule with kindness. 
It was rather a clever phrase, and he did make some head- 
way with the thoughtless. But, of course, the idea is pre- 



AFTER SEVEN YEARS m 

posterous. The present system of government, cumbersome, 
costly and reeking with intolerable injustice, must be swept 
away. Ameliorating reforms are good only to a certain 
extent; it is worse than futile to try to cure an ulcer by paint- 
ing it. We cannot build up a stable and just government 
upon a morass of misrule. No matter how fair the structure 
may be, it will collapse. Home Rule alone will make this 
people prosperous and contented, and anyone with an atom 
of sense knows it." 

Before attempting to show the great advancement made 
in solving the Irish land problem during the last seven years 
it is necessary to describe briefly what the problem is and 
review the efforts made to settle it. Bound up as it is indis- 
solubly with the fortunes — and misfortunes — of the Irish 
people, it has been kept insistently before the British govern- 
ment for many years, and the mass of legislation upon it 
demonstrates not only the vigorous activity of the Irish 
leaders, but a realization on the part of England that a great 
evil cries for remedy. That the successive statutes and their 
clustering amendments still have not removed all of the 
hoary injustices is in itself evidence that nothing short of 
self-government will meet Ireland's manifold demands. 

I have reviewed very briefly the bases of this unique 
land problem, showing how the seeds of interminable wrong 
were sown when the land was grabbed in successive invasions, 
and how the crop was matured under the grotesque laws 
which made the landlords virtual owners of the tenants as 
well as of the lands they tilled. This was through the custom 
which empowered the landlord to raise rents as fast as the 
tenant improved his farm. With the threat of eviction 
always before him, the hapless tenant had to pay. When 
he could no longer meet the demands he was thrown out and 
all his labor of years legally confiscated by the absentee 
owner. This general rule, responsible for untold misery, 
was brought into infinitely wider operation through the ter- 
rific famine of 1847. That catastrophe spread a blight of 
poverty over the nation, and in addition drove countless land- 
lords into bankruptcy. Thereupon, in an effort to do some- 
thing to lift the burden of misery, Parliament established a 



ii2 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

court empowered to sell hopelessly incumbered estates. The 
hope was that with a fresh start all around the problem 
might solve itself; but, of course, while the tenant remained 
without title to any part of the improvements he had made, 
and with no protection against capricious eviction, he was 
only exchanging masters, and in most cases exchanging them 
for the worse. There was a rush of creditors to the new 
court, the bankrupt estates were bought wholesale by specu- 
lators and rents were raised higher than before. Evictions 
by wholesale ensued. All Ireland was a place of misery and 
mourning. Finding rent collections impossible, the new land- 
lords were seized with a mania for making large grazing 
farms, and the helpless tenants were swept of: the land as 
ruthlessly as if they had been noxious animals. In 1849 an d 
succeeding years, when an eviction was virtually a sentence 
of starvation, populous districts as large as small counties 
were turned into empty plains. Houses were razed, fences 
leveled and the little farms consolidated in huge ranches. It 
was at this period that the London Times, never noted for 
sympathy with Ireland's woes, confessed that "the name of 
an Irish landlord stinks in the nostrils of Christendom." In 
the ten years following the famine 300,000 families were 
thrust out of their homes and 1,500,000 victims of tyranny 
and spoiling fled from Ireland to America. This was the 
high tide in the wave of emigration, but to this day the flow 
has never ceased. 

As early as 1845 the Devon Commission had recom- 
mended the correcting of the glaring injustice which denied 
to the tenant any interest in the farm he created from the 
bare land. But it was not until 1870 that the principle was 
established. Even then the remedy was ineffective. The 
law simply made the landlord pay for improvements when 
he evicted a tenant, and he could recoup himself by raising 
the rent to the next incumbent. Out of this grew the famous 
demand for "the three F's" — fair rent, free sale and fixity 
of tenure — which were finally won after the savage land war 
of 1879, in the Act of 188 1. It not only established finally 
and irrevocably the principle of tenant partnership right, 
but created a court which fixed the rents to be paid during 
periods of fifteen years. How much of downright robbery 



AFTER SEVEN YEARS 113 

there was under the old system may be deduced from the 
fact that in the first readjustment the court reduced rents 
twenty per cent., taking an annual burden of $7,500,000 
from the shoulders of the people. But for more than a 
generation prior to this great victory the only permanent 
solution of the desperate problem had been under desultory 
discussion from time to time. In 1847 Lord John Russell 
advocated the proposal of John Stuart Mill for making the 
peasants proprietors of the lands they tilled. More than 
twenty years later, in 1870, a timid move was made in the 
direction of assisting the tenants to purchase their farms. 
Parnell in 1878 made a light for the idea, and the Act of 
1 88 1 marked a certain small advance. 

But the Ashbourne Act of 1885 was the first real recog- 
nition and adoption of what is known as Land Purchase. 
This act provided for the advancing by the state of the entire 
sum necessary to purchase lands, the tenants repaying it in 
forty-nine annual instalments of four per cent. Of this, 
three and one-eighth per cent, was interest and seven-eighths 
per cent, went to the sinking fund for liquidation of the loan. 
More than 25,000 tenants were able to take advantage of 
the plan under that act and an amending act of 1888. The 
principle had been established, and since 1885 has been 
broadened and its application made more practical. In 1886 
Gladstone offered to the Irish landlords terms of purchase 
somewhat similar to those of the Ashbourne Act; but the 
plan fell with his Home Rule bill, to which it was attached. 

The next important move was in 1891, when Premier 
Balfour authorized the appropriation of $150,000,000 to 
extend the operation of the Ashbourne Act, under which 
expenditure had been limited to $50,000,000. All of the 
purchase money was to be advanced to the tenants by the 
state, through the issue of guaranteed land stock bearing 
dividends of two and three-fourths per cent., repayment 
being made by an annuity at the rate of four per cent., pay- 
able in half-yearly instalments for a period of forty-nine 
years. Under this act no fewer than 30,000 tenants became 
owners of their farms — 5000 more than had been able to 
take advantage of all the preceding acts. In 1896 another 
great step forward was made. The Land Act of that year 



ii 4 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

asserted the principle of compulsory sale of bankrupt estates 
and lengthened the term of repayment to sixty-eight years, 
the payments being reduced at the end of each period of 
ten years. This was the act in operation in 1902, when the 
writer visited Ireland. About 47,000 farm holdings had 
been transferred under it and the Act of 1891, but there 
were still many defects. The hardships of the great mass 
of tenants led to the passage of the Wyndham Act of 1903. 
Under this the British treasury advances up to $800,000,- 
000 at two and three-quarters per cent, interest, with one- 
half per cent, added for the sinking fund. The advances 
are made in cash by the Estates Commissioners, and the 
tenants pay three and one-quarter per cent, of the sum 
annually. At this rate they acquire ownership in sixty-eight 
and one-half years. Instead of paying, say $50 a year rent 
forever, the tenant pays $30 or $35 annually, with the cer- 
tainty that his heirs will own the property. 

And what was the security — aside from the land — for 
this huge loan? It may interest those who decry the Irish 
peasantry as improvident to know. The security is the credit 
of the Irish tenant farmers, and what that credit is may be 
measured from the fact that out of more than 70,000 pur- 
chasers under previous acts, only two failed to meet their 
payments. The amounts received by the landlords as pur- 
chase money do not, of course, yield incomes in interest equal 
to the sums extorted in rents. But, on the other hand, they 
have security from agitation and further reductions of rent, 
and, in addition, a bonus of $60,000,000 was provided to 
"bridge the gap" between former rents and the incomes 
from purchase moneys. Under this act, between November 
1, 1903, and March 31, 1906, nearly 87,000 holdings passed 
from the ownership of landlords to the ownership of tenants. 
Here is the Land Purchase record for the period ending 
March 31, 1908: 

Number of tenants who have purchased their holdings under 
Acts of 

1870 877 1891 and 1896. . 47,000 

1881 731 1903 141,940 

1885 and 1888.. . 25,000 

Thus we see that under all the Land Purchase Acts more 



AFTER SEVEN YEARS 115 

than 215,000 tenants have been made owners of their farms 
or are now in process of acquiring ownership. There are 
still, nevertheless, many defects in the law, but most of these 
will be remedied by the amending act now being pressed by 
the Irish Parliamentary Party upon the friendly Liberal 
government.* The chief reform will be the making of sales 
by landlords compulsory. When tenants on an unsold estate 
find themselves paying rent, while their neighbors on an 
adjoining estate are paying less sums annually in purchase 
money, discontent is inevitable. This anomaly must, of 
course, be extinguished. All England virtually realizes now 
that Ireland will never be satisfied, and cannot in justice be 
satisfied, until the last vestige of her archaic and intolerable 
system of landlordism has been swept away. 

Before leaving this question it may not be amiss to quote 
an undeniable authority for the statements made concerning 
the land system which is now disappearing. Pages could be 
filled with citations from statesmen such as Gladstone, 
Bright, Chamberlain and Balfour, besides economists like 
John Stuart Mill, and various commissions whose reports 
cumber the parliamentary files of the last century. It will 
be sufficient to quote a few passages from the final report of 
the Royal Commission on Congestion in Ireland, dated May 
5, 1908. 

This commission, appointed July 20, 1906, worked 
zealously for nearly two years, visited every part of Ire- 
land, inspected conditions at close range and examined hun- 
dreds of witnesses, whose testimony fills ten big volumes. 
The members included the Earl of Dudley, once Lord Lieu- 
tenant; Sir Anthony MacDonnell, former Undersecretary; 
the Most Reverend Patrick O'Donnell, Bishop of Raphoe, 
and other distinguished men. The report says: 

"Two questions naturally arise: First, how did districts 
so little capable of supporting any population at all come to 
be populated very thickly, as regards the productive capacity 
of the land; and, second, how is it that in large districts, 

*The bill passed the House of Commons in October, 1909, but 
was emasculated by the House of Lords by elimination of the clause 
making sales compulsory. This, with the lords' opposition to the 
budget, created a political crisis, which may lead to a general election 
early in 1910. 



u6 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

where the land is mostly good, there are very few people on 
the good land, but great numbers on the bad land adjoining? 
The main answer to both queries is to be found in the course 
of Irish history during the last three hundred years, though, 
of course, economic causes have contributed, especially during 
the nineteenth century. The various 'plantations' of Ireland, 
the acts of settlement and corporation and the substitution 
of English land tenure for the traditional Irish methods of 
landholding have profoundly affected the agrarian develops 
ment of Ireland. The chief incident, however, was the 
Cromwellian Act of Settlement, under which most of the 
land-owning population implicated on the Royalist side were 
banished west of the Shannon. * * * 

"The commercial restrictions from which Ireland 
suffered during the eighteenth century forced the people to 
look for subsistence to the land, and the agrarian unrest was 
intensified by the penal laws (against Catholics) which pre- 
vented the greater part of the population from acquiring any 
beneficial interest in the land. * * * Congestion and 
sub-division of the holdings went on until the great crash of 
the famine. In many cases the landlords were forced to 
effect clearances, either by their creditors or because of the 
difficulty of obtaining rents from pauper tenants. In certain 
districts the greater portion of the population died, and 
whatever may be the most potent causes of the consolidation 
of holdings about the time of the famine, there can be no 
doubt of its extent. * * * 

"While part of the land formerly occupied by small 
holdings was utilized for the creation of large grazing farms, 
some of it was employed for the enlargement of other small 
holdings. Many of the small farms swept away were uneco- 
nomic, but the sudden nature of the changes undoubtedly 
caused great suffering and left bitter memories. This tendency 
to consolidate farms was given an impetus by the Incumbered 
Estates Act of 1848, which replaced many of the old land- 
lords by new men, a large number of whom, looking upon 
the owning of land as a purely commercial transaction, and 
disregarding traditional rights of the tenants, raised rents or 
evicted tenants and consolidated the holdings thus vacated. 
The rise in the price of beef led to more land being cleared 



AFTER SEVEN YEARS 117 

by eviction and thrown into grazing farms. On the poorer 
land many of the inhabitants were left undisturbed, because 
it was not worth while to resume possession. Many of those 
evicted settled on unreclaimed pieces of land in the neigh- 
borhood and added to the congestion, and some carved out 
new holdings for themselves on the waste land along the 
western littoral, and started the almost impossible task of 
winning a living from land incapable of itself of supporting 
life according to any decent standard." 

Here is the whole story — confiscation, unjust land laws, 
congestion, starvation. To the credit of civilization, the 
elaborate injustice of three hundred years is now in progress 
of extinction. Landlordism is disappearing, and Ireland, 
fitted by nature to support millions in prosperity, is passing 
back into the ownership of her own people. 



XIV 
*AN EVICTION 

I am going to describe an Irish eviction. It took 
place the day after I landed in the country to report upon 
the wonderful progress made during the last seven years in 
reforming the land laws. The scene I shall describe is quite 
out of harmony with the purposes of this tour, which is to 
show how great a change for the better has been wrought. 
But this eviction, a rather shocking greeting to an optimistic 
inquirer, demands a place in the story for the very reason 
that it is shocking. The scene of brutality and violence, of 
conflict between a stern law and a defiant people, was in itself 
evidence that a brighter day has dawned, because it was so 
unusual. I do not think there have been half a dozen forci- 
ble evictions in Ireland since 1902. When one recalls the 
wholesale evictions of sixty years ago and of the days of the 
savage land war, when families literally by thousands were 
dragged out of their cottage homes and flung into the ditches 
to starve, one realizes that this exceptional affair is a sign 
of hope, for its general condemnation is testimony that the 
barbarous custom is extinguished forever. In the present 
instance I shall not enter into the merits of the case which 
furnishes the unusual example. Indeed, from inquiries made 
I judge that it would be a nice decision which should say 
whether justice was with the landlord or the tenant. I shall, 
therefore, simply describe what occurred as I learned it from 
eye-witnesses and an inspection of the field of battle. 

The scene was the farmhouse of Richard J. Walsh, near 
Kilmurry, a short distance from Castleisland, in the county 
of Kerry. As it lies only a couple of hours' drive from Kil- 
larney, quite a number of the spectators were from the shores 
of the beautiful lakes. Walsh and his landlord, a Dublin 
man, had been at odds for many months. Settlement being 
found impossible, there was an attempt at eviction in June, 

*This chapter was written in Killarney in July, 1909. 

118 



AN EVICTION 119 

1909. But when the sheriff and his bailiffs arrived to 
serve their writ they found the place fortified, and their 
summons was greeted with scorn. This having been 
reported and renewed negotiations having proved useless, 
the might of the British government was invoked. The 
American, with his quick resentment of anything approach- 
ing militarism, may be interested to know that the subjection 
of this farmhouse, inhabited by one farmer and his bedridden 
mother, eighty-three years old, called for not only the local 
members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, but drafts from 
Kerry, Limerick and Dublin. A whole company of these 
armed military police, with their officers, was brought from 
the capital, two hundred miles away. It may be remarked 
that the defenders were determined to make the trip worth 
while. Fourteen neighbors of Walsh volunteered to garrison 
the house, and the defense they put up was regarded by con- 
noisseurs in evictions as one of the ablest and most stubborn 
on record. Barring the facts that firearms were not used on 
either side and that no one was killed, the contest was as 
serious and as brutal as any incident of war. 

The constabulary, drafted into Castleisland, were under 
command of Assistant Inspector General Ball, of Dublin, 
one of the ablest and most fearless of the officers. He 
moved his forces like an alert military commander. At three 
o'clock in the morning, in a driving rain, the sheriff, the 
bailiffs and their armed escort of two hundred and fifty con- 
stables marched out of Castleisland and along the winding 
road to Fort Walsh. Civilians interested in the row pre- 
ceded and followed the military, some on foot and some in 
jaunting cars. On one of the vehicles that sped along the 
wet lanes was Joseph Murphy, M. P., who had hastened 
over from London in the night to witness the difficulties of 
one of his constituents. 

It was hardly daylight, owing to the low-hanging clouds, 
when the attacking force approached the condemned farm- 
house. But early as it was, the defenders were astir, and 
knots of sullen country people stood about as the big force 
of constables marched up. Between six and seven o'clock 
the church bells in surrounding villages began to ring and 
horns were blown. This roused the whole countryside, and 



120 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

from every direction men and women came tramping through 
the mud to the scene of strife. The constables, drawn up in 
uniformed ranks, looked grim enough in the gray morning 
light, but the people looked grimmer still. The rain fell 
steadily. 

It was a little after seven o'clock when the attack com- 
menced. The deadly looking eviction paraphernalia — peace- 
ful weapons in their proper use — had been brought along in 
carts. The house could be reached only by a lane overhung 
by huge elms. Two of these trees, a hundred yards apart, 
had been cut near the ground and blocked the thoroughfare 
with a tangle of big branches. While squads of police were 
detailed to surround the farm, bailiffs took big cross-cut saws 
and axes and began the task of cutting away the first barrier. 
It should be observed that only the civil authorities were 
employed in the attack at first. The military arm was used 
when the sheriff's men had confessed themselves beaten. It 
took a full half hour for the sweating bailiffs to cut a passage 
through the felled trees, admitting the vehicles. Meanwhile, 
Mr. Murphy, more as a matter of form than with any hope 
of stopping the attack, talked to Inspector Ball about 
Walsh's aged mother lying ill in the beleaguered house. 
Ball readily promised that every effort would be made to' 
avoid harming her. Mr. Murphy tried to get a pledge that 
the police would merely protect the civil officers and not 
assist in the attack. He urged the desirability of bringing 
about peace, if possible. 

"Please don't address me on these points," said the 
inspector. "I have nothing to do with negotiations. My 
duty is to protect the sheriff and his men. If they are resisted 
with violence, it becomes our duty to smash in and make 
arrests." 

Mr. Murphy persisted, but the inspector was inflexible, 
and finally asked sharply that the discussion be ended. 
While it was in progress the bailiffs had cleared a gap which 
had been filled with small trees, brambles and stones, and 
through this the horses and carts were led into a field adjoin- 
ing the house. The police, the rain dripping from their caps 
and the mud splashing under their feet, followed and were 
drawn up in squads, completely surrounding the dwelling. 



AN EVICTION 121 

It was a curious sight — an amazing sight in a time of peacs 
in this twentieth century. In the center of the armed circle 
was the farmhouse, built of stone, in the ordinary cottage 
design. On every side it was heavily fortified with big 
trunks of trees, stones and brambles. Holes had been cut in 
the roof, and from these peered the masked faces of the 
defenders. There was a pause of a few minutes, besiegers 
and besieged regarding each other silently. Then the sheriff 
started work. 

A horse was unhitched, a rope fastened to him and a 
half dozen bailiffs carried one end of the rope to the house, 
where they took a hitch around one of the tree trunks. A 
crack of the whip, a crash and a stumble, and one of the big 
timbers had been dragged from the fortifications. But not 
without casualties. As the bailiffs ran close to the house 
showers of boiling water and hot tar came from the openings 
in the roof. The luckless officers winced as the stinging 
shower fell on them, but did their work and got away with- 
out being disabled. In a few minutes they went at it again, 
working manfully under the painful bombardment from the 
house. One by one the trees were hauled away. As the men 
clambered up the barricade, compelled to stop now and then 
and use axes on the entangled branches, buckets appeared at 
the holes in the roofs and emptied their burning contents on 
the assailants. From time to time a real shower spurted out. 
The beleaguered garrison was well supplied with ammuni- 
tion and with a rude sort of artillery, too. Besides hot water 
and tar, the defenders used dry and wet lime and drew on 
stores of stable refuse which they had carried into the house 
before the siege. They did very effective work with boiling 
water ejected from machines used in spraying trees. 

During all this time the rain fell steadily, driven by a 
searching wind. The disciplined constabulary watched the 
amazing operations in stolid silence, but the country folk, 
outside the military lines, cheered whenever the attacking 
party was driven back temporarily. It was an exciting scene, 
yet a sordid one, too. The defense was stubborn, but hardly 
of a character to arouse enthusiasm, because the assailants had 
to work in the open and were forbidden by law to make any 
reprisal. It was an unequal contest, though, because it couki 



122 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

end in but one way, and there was something admirable in 
the savage obstinacy of the fifteen men in the house, because 
they knew they were condemning themselves to prison terms 
by their actions. Mr. Murphy again tried to persuade the 
authorities to withdraw, this time appealing to the sheriff. 
But that officer grimly said he must proceed with his duty. 
For more than one hour his men toiled at the barricade at the 
eastern end of the house before they got the gable half 
cleared. Then the sheriff, drawing his men beyond range 
of the buckets and spraying machines, read aloud the eject- 
ment decree and formally demanded surrender of the occu- 
pants of the house. Of course, no one inside heard him, 
and if they had the answer would have been a shout of 
defiance. So the attack continued. Drenched with rain and 
smeared with tar and lime, the bailiffs resumed the attack on 
the barricade, to be met by still more determined defense 
from within the house. Flesh and blood could hardly with- 
stand such punishment long, and after half an hour of gruel- 
ing work the men retreated, beaten back. The sheriff 
reported to Inspector Ball that the violence offered to his 
men was of such a character that he was constrained to ask 
for police aid. 

There was a quick change. The inspector, who had 
been watching the battle critically, but with apparent indiffer- 
ence, stiffened into a combatant. Sharp orders rang out, the 
ranks of the constabulary broke, men darted hither and 
thither, each intent on his duty, and within five minutes the 
serious business of reducing the stronghold began. This 
time something had to give way, and obviously it would not 
be the constabulary. Some of them ran forward with a long 
ladder, which was flung with a crash against the eaves. Men 
ran up the rungs, shielding their faces as best they could 
from the deadly shower of water and tar and lime, and, 
clinging to the ladder desperately, brandished iron rods 
wound with barbed wire over the apertures in the roof and 
wall. This, of course, was to keep the besieged men back 
from the openings. But the ruse was not effective against 
the well-handled buckets and spraying machines. From the 
ooenings still came streams of material, and the dark green 
■uniforms were soon bedaubed with the mess. While the 



AN EVICTION 123 

men on the ladder tried to keep back the defenders their 
followers attacked in earnest the stone wall of the house 
beneath them, where the barricade of trees had been cleared 
away. Despite the pitiless bombardment, they hacked 
steadily at the wall with picks and crowbars, and slowly, very 
slowly, began to make an impression on the stones. The 
assaults from within became more savage. Relentlessly the 
besieged men poured out their bombardment of boiling water 
and tar, with streams of powdered lime and liquid plaster, 
until the attacking party were literally unrecognizable. 

"It was a disgusting scene," declared the eye-witness who 
described it to me — a man whose sympathies, by the way, 
were with the defenders. "I have seen many an eviction in 
bygone days, but never one so brutal. The men inside made 
a gallant stand in a hopeless fight, but the men outside stood 
the worst punishment I ever witnessed." 

The remarkable part of it was the grim good nature of 
the constabulary. The men went forward in relays, smiling, 
and came back drenched and disfigured, still smiling, even 
while they winced with pain and weariness. Inspector Ball 
took his share of the work with his men. His face was black 
and grimed and his uniform was a mass of tar and lime; but 
he stood steadily at his post, directing the attack with relent- 
less precision. Mr. Murphy, who had declared again and 
again that the scene was disgraceful in an age of enlighten- 
ment, finally begged the commander to withdraw his men, if 
only for five minutes, that an appeal might be made to the 
defenders for a compromise. Inspector Ball wiped the sweat 
from his eyes and pointed to a paneless window. 

"I cannot withdraw my men," he said, "but you may 
go up there and talk to the persons inside, if you wish." 

This was out of the question, and the savage work went 
on. The constabulary persisted in the face of almost incred- 
ible punishment. One man, a sergeant, stood on a ladder for 
more than an hour trying to< protect his comrades below. 
During the whole of that time he was a target for the attacks 
of those within, and when he was finally relieved he hardly 
resembled a human being. Meanwhile, a detachment of the 
police carried on a "flank" attack at the front of the house, 
if the expression will be permitted. First they dragged away 



i2 4 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

the barricade of trees, then smashed a window, all the time 
showered with missiles from the roof. Others formed 
a'"sharpshooting" squad, throwing stones at the roof open- 
ings to discourage those inside at work at the apertures. 
This astounding scene continued until after eleven o'clock. 
For more than four hours the authorities had been battering 
at the house, and still had not captured it. The pick and 
crowbar men had been relieved again and again. No matter 
how badly mauled were the men who were called off to rest, 
there were always others ready to take their places. 

At last the ceaseless battering at the wall began to tell. 
A big stone was pried loose, then another and another, and 
a black gap showed in the structure. The constables, under 
a withering attack from above, tore at the stones furiously. 
The gap widened and was carried downward toward the 
ground. Inspector Ball summoned four men. They lined 
up, armed with rifles, and fixed their bayonets. The 
inspector drew his sword and marched toward the house. 
The attackers fell back, and through the breach marched 
the commander and his squad. There was no resistance. 
With the opening of the breach the defenders quit. They 
had done their best and their worst. The rest was jail. 
Richard Walsh and his fourteen companions — neighbors 
from the Castleisland district and men from Tralee — were 
placed under arrest and sent, handcuffed, to Castleisland, 
where that afternoon they were remanded for trial. 

The house, battered within and without, looked as 
though it had been the center of a furious battle, as indeed 
it had. In the center of the dwelling, placed as far as pos- 
sible from the scenes of strife, lay Mrs. Walsh, not danger- 
ously ill, but too* weak to be moved. Inspector Ball gave 
orders that she should not be disturbed. Women neighbors 
came to tend her, while a bailiff remained in charge of the 
premises in the name of the vindicated law. All along the 
road to the jail the fifteen prisoners were cheered by the 
country folk. Whatever may have been the strict merits of 
the case, they were regarded as fighters for a principle. 
Most of them were released under $250 personal bail, with 
two sureties of $125 each. That evening a public meeting 
was held, Walsh and some of his fellow-defenders being 



AN EVICTION 125 

present. Mr. Murphy in a speech declared the people pro- 
tested against the use of the police as members of the crowbar 
brigade. 

"I believe Dick Walsh and his brave companions," he 
said, "are fighting the battle of all the tenants in Kerry in 
the effort he is making to obtain justice. Public opinion is 
stronger than the government, and public opinion is with 
him. He has suffered, and may suffer more, but the fight 
made to-day by him and his friends has sounded the death 
knell of forcible evictions in this county." 

The ruined homestead on the day after the eviction was 
a sadly instructive scene. The roof was torn and battered, 
every window broken and a great gaping hole in the end 
wall. The dooryard was a sea of trampled mud, and all 
about lay the scarred trunks of trees, those still piled around 
the house being smeared with tar and lime. Inside lay the 
old mother of the evicted tenant, feeble in health, but obdu- 
rate as her son. Whose was the fault? Upon whom lies the 
blame for the awful waste and misery and the harvest of hate 
that must be garnered from such a sowing? Upon the merits 
of the individual case the courts will decide. But surely one 
may condemn a system in which such barbarities survive, and 
surely one may rejoice that in all likelihood there will never 
be such another scene, once so familiar, in this island. 



XV 
CONGESTION REMEDIED 

As has been written, I talked with John Dillon, noted 
among the Irish leaders, of the great work which has been 
done for the people since I visited Ireland seven years 
ago. He is no mere enthusiast, this calm, studious man of 
affairs. His devotion to his country is as deep and his spirit 
as resolute as in the days when he was literally a rebel against 
the government and tasted the bitterness of prison for the 
cause. But a calmer time has come as the result of what he 
and his associates suffered. He sees the things for which he 
fought coming to pass in government policies. Instead of 
defying the laws he helps to make them. Instead of being 
a political outlaw he is a respected member of the governing 
system — still unreconciled to its gross defects, still waging 
war for the reforms which alone can revive Ireland's pros- 
perity, a leader in the peaceful reformation which follows 
the turbulence of revolt. So that when I asked him how 
much progress had been made in the brief period he spoke 
with dispassionate conviction and not in exuberance. 

"The whole face of the land has been changed," he 
said, and for an hour he described the marvelous betterments 
which had been wrought by the simple application of just 
and rational laws to the intolerable abuses of the land sys- 
tem. 

"The whole face of the country has been changed." 

It was a striking phrase — a little too striking, it might 
seem, to be strictly accurate. I know now that the state- 
ment was literally true. I know, because I have seen. I 
know, because I have traveled for days and days over the 
countryside which I traversed seven years ago, and have seen 
peace and plenty where then I saw misery and despair. The 
face of the land has, indeed, been changed, for there are 
happy homes and gardens where cattle grazed, and industry 

*This chapter was written in Castlerea, County Roscommon, in 
July, 1909. 

126 



CONGESTION REMEDIED 127 

and contentment where hopeless poverty held its ghastly 
sway. Needless to say the work is not yet done, for the 
vast problem covers an area of millions of acres and the lives 
of half a million human beings. But the start has been 
made, and the work of a few short years has lifted thousands 
from despair. The justice of the long fight has been recog- 
nized, and the Empire has been pledged to the remedy. It 
needs only time and money to complete the great task. 

That the remedy is the substitution of peasant proprie- 
torship for landlordism has been fully explained. For thirty 
years this change has been going on. Thousands of tenants 
— tens of thousands — have become owners of their lands by 
contracting to pay annuities for government loans instead of 
rent to landlords; and in every case the transfer has justified 
itself. This scheme of general land purchase is, however, 
so vast in extent that I shall not do more than give a sum- 
mary of the results. I shall describe in detail only one part 
of the economic revolution — the most important part, 
because the suffering of the people has been the greatest; and 
the most picturesque and creditable, because the improvement 
has been of such marvelous extent. 

To deal with the huge and intricate problem of land 
purchase there have been in existence for many years two 
bodies of wide powers — the Land Commission, formed in 
1 88 1, and the Estates Commissioners; formed in 1903. A 
third body, created to deal with the most acute conditions 
of distress, is the Congested Districts Board; it is the work 
of this body which will be more fully described. It may be 
taken as a fact that land purchase as a policy is going steadily 
forward, justified more emphatically with each passing year. 
The congested districts constitute a problem within a prob- 
lem — a condition which demanded special and drastic treat- 
ment, aside from the application of the basic principles of 
land purchase. Practical recognition of the great task and 
practical efforts to cope with it are due to A. J. Balfour, once 
(Conservative) Chief Secretary for Ireland, later Prime 
Minister and now leader of the Opposition in the House of 
Commons. It was when Chief Secretary that he conceived 
the idea of placing the poorest districts of Ireland under the 
management and control of a special body of nominated, 



128 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

unpaid, conscientious men. They were to be endowed with 
large powers and made administrators of a fund to be 
devoted to the betterment of the condition of the people and 
the development of the agricultural, fishing and industrial 
resources of the districts most needing such aid. 

The Congested Districts Board was created in 1891, 
and its powers have been enlarged by six supplementary acts. 
Further and radical expansion of these powers is proposed 
in the land act now under consideration in the Parlia- 
ment. Wide latitude has been given to the board by 
the successive statutes. It can purchase untenanted lands 
with government funds, acting through the Land Commis- 
sion. It can enlarge and rearrange holdings to the satisfac- 
tion of tenants and make them owners by agreements of pur- 
chase on the annuity plan. It can move families, where that 
is possible and desirable. It can build roads and fences, con- 
struct drains, open and develop uninhabited tracts, level woods, 
deepen and divert rivers, advance funds for individual 
improvements. And it can erect comfortable, sanitary dwell- 
ings for the helpless occupants of hovels, and start families 
steeped in poverty upon the road to self-respecting, self- 
sustaining industry and comfort. All this the board can do, 
and all this it has done and is doing to the extent of the funds 
at its disposal. Already it has to its credit amazing accom- 
plishments, and inquiry makes it clear that the passage of the 
present land act will enable the board to solve completely the 
vast, intricate and distressing problem of the most unfortu- 
nate part of Ireland. 

To understand clearly the nature of the work and the 
almost incredibly sunken condition of the people whom it is 
sought to rescue, the reader must learn the character and 
extent of the congested districts. The framers of the Act 
of 1 89 1 had first to define the area with which the proposed 
board should be empowered to deal. After exhaustive 
inquiry and various tests, it was decided that the electoral 
divisions — of which there are 3652 in Ireland — should be 
considered the unit of congestion, and that that division 
should be scheduled as congested where the average (annual) 
ratable valuation was under $7.50; that is, where the aver- 
age assessment of annual value was less than $7.50 for each 




BRINGING HOME THE TURF. 



CONGESTION REMEDIED 129 

person. [It should be noted that the taxes are levied upon 
annual ratable value, and not upon market value, as in 
America.] It was obvious, however, that there would be 
found a few electoral divisions in every county that would 
meet this test. Hence there was made a restricting provision 
that no division in any county should be scheduled as con- 
gested unless at least one-fifth of the total population of the 
county lived in congested divisions as defined. 

Under these provisions, four hundred and twenty-nine 
electoral divisions in the counties of Donegal, Leitrim, Sligo, 
Mayo, Roscommon, Galway, Kerry and Cork were recorded 
as congested within the meaning of the act. There was a 
deliberate purpose here, of course, to concentrate the efforts 
of the board, but the restrictions obviously worked injustice. 
Many electoral divisions quite as poor as those scheduled 
were ignored because they lay in the midst of rich counties 
other than those named, or in the midst of prosperous dis- 
tricts in the eight counties referred to. Through no fault of 
their own, the inhabitants of such divisions have been 
excluded from the benefits of the board's operation. There 
was even the anomaly of the board's buying land outside a 
congested district and moving on to it families from such 
districts, while it was unable to give any help to families 
equally as poor who lived next door to the land purchased. 
These defects are to be remedied in the bill now pending. If 
it shall pass, the board will be able to operate in any part of 
a county in which congested districts are scheduled. 

*■ A few figures will show the enormous extent of the task 
which confronted the board. The four hundred and twenty- 
nine congested districts have a total area of 3,626,381 acres, 
more than one-sixth of the total area of Ireland, with a popu- 
lation (in 1901) of 505,723, more than one-ninth the total 
population, and an annual ratable valuation of about 
$2,885,000, which is only one-twenty-seventh of the total 
valuation of Ireland. It will be observed that the popula- 
tion in these districts is not dense and that the word "con- 
gested" is in reality a misnomer. The term was accidentally 
applied, but has become official. It simply means excep- 
tionally poor. The average annual valuation of lands in 
these districts is eighty four cents per acre, while the average 



130 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

for all Ireland is $2.90. Hence the trouble, as the Royal 
Commission on Congestion found, is not a scarcity of land, 
but a scarcity in these districts of any but the poorest land. 
Taking the total area, there is an average of about seven 
acres per head; but since the greater portion must be 
excluded as rocky hillside or untillable bog, it will be seen 
that there is actually a sort of congestion and that the poorer 
parts of these districts are, in fact, agricultural "slums." 
Now, Ireland is predominantly an agricultural country, but 
this condition is most marked in the congested districts. 
There nine-tenths of the population subsist, or attempt to, 
upon agricultural holdings, as against four-sevenths in the 
whole country. The impossible conditions of life may be 
understood when it is stated that the minimum annual valua- 
tion of a holding capable of supporting a family is $50, 
■while the average in the congested districts is $30, as against 
$110 for the whole of Ireland. No fewer than 74,413, or 
seven-eighths, of the holdings are under the danger point of 
$50, while 45,138, or more than one-half of the 84,954 
holdings, have an annual value of under $20. This explains 
the startling fact that thousands of families in these districts 
have been kept alive from year to year only through remit- 
tances from relatives in America and through the annual 
migration of the stronger members to England and Scotland 
as agricultural laborers. 

The causes of these fearful conditions I have already 
cited from official reports. They run back to the time of 
Elizabeth and forward to within the present generation. 
First were the successive "plantations" of court favorites and 
adventurers; then the Cromwellian campaigns and statutes, 
which banished the people from the fertile plains of eastern 
and central Ireland to the inhospitable west; then the extinc- 
tion of every industry save agriculture by impossible duties 
and actual prohibition; then the penal laws against Roman 
Catholics; then the fall in the price of field crops and the 
rise in the price of cattle, which started a craze for grazing 
ranches and led to the eviction of countless thousands from 
the farms they had made by their own industry; then the 
frightful catastrophe of the famine of 1847, which doomed 
thousands more; then the bankruptcy of many of the old 



CONGESTION REiMEDIED 131 

landlords and the transfer of their estates to cold-blooded 
speculators. Thus the remorseless evolution went on, every 
turn of the screws of fate driving the helpless peasantry 
lower and lower and staining the pages of Irish history with 
tales of suffering and slaughter by starvation. And the final 
result was the problem of the congested districts, with its 
half million of human units staring with dreadful accusation 
in the face of civilization. 

Dark as was the score against British misrule for three 
hundred years, it must be said that Great Britain made 
honest, if misguided, efforts during the last quarter of the 
nineteenth century to pay some part of the gigantic debt. In 
that period $20,000,000 was spent for the relief of chronic 
poverty in Ireland and $15,000,000 more in plans to 
improve means of transportation. But these measures were 
futile to reach the deep-seated trouble. The ghastly evolu- 
tion of centuries could not be remedied by such means; it 
required an economic revolution to undo the gigantic wrongs. 
That revolution began with the establishment of the principle 
of land purchase — making the tenants the owners of their 
lands — and the movement goes resistlessly onward. 

In reviewing the work of the Congested Districts 
Board, which is gradually transforming the poorer parts of 
Ireland, we must bear in mind the magnitude of the task 
which it has undertaken — the reclamation of half a million 
people, scattered over 3,600,000 acres, or more than one- 
sixth of the area of Ireland. Countless attempts were made 
to solve the immense problem, but it was found at last that 
there was only one remedy — the creation of a peasant pro- 
prietary from the helpless tenants. Specially empowered to 
deal with the acute conditions in the west, the Congested 
Districts Board has been laboring since 1891 to effect the 
transformation. While the funds at first appropriated were 
wholly inadequate, the powers of the board as then con- 
ferred and as enlarged by subsequent acts are very wide. It 
was authorized to take steps toward: 

First — Aiding migration or emigration from the con- 
gested districts and settling the migrants or emigrants in 
their new homes. 



132 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

Second — Aiding and developing agriculture, forestry, 
the breeding of live stock and poultry, weaving, spinning, 
fishing (including the constcuctionn of piers and harbors and 
supplying fishing boats and gear, and industries connected 
with fishing) and any other suitable industries. 

Considering the area and the population affected, this 
was assuredly a large order. The powers, too, are remark- 
able. Their operation constitutes paternalism of the most 
advanced character, but it is perfectly clear that nothing 
short of paternalism could deal with the abnormal conditions 
that had grown up throughout the centuries. There lay 
huge tracts of fertile land, utilized only for grazing pur- 
poses, while the people were crowded upon stony tracts of 
hillside and desolate bog. The problem was really one of 
redistribution. In some way enough land of decent fertility 
must be placed within reach of each family to insure a living 
by ordinary labor. But this was not all. The impossible 
system under which the people have struggled so long and 
so hopelessly had lowered the standard of living to a shock- 
ing extent. Many thousands of families in the congested 
districts lived amid surroundings of the direst poverty and 
distress. The homes had degenerated into hovels absolutely 
unfit for habitation, except that they gave a sort of shelter, 
and, furthermore, the helplessness and hopelessness of the 
people had bred acquiescence in customs which made com- 
fort impossible and outbreaks of disease almost epidemic. 
The keeping of farm animals in the dwellings was quite 
common. It was easy to sneer at such habits, but when it is 
understood that thousands of families were kept under a 
roof only through remittances from America and the migra- 
tory labor of the stronger members, the wonder is that they 
continued to exist at all. The greater wonder is, though, 
the resilience these very people have exhibited with the lift- 
ing of the burden of injustice. For a week I have been 
traveling through the country districts I visited seven years 
ago, and everywhere I have seen progress, improvement, a 
brighter and better civilization. Just a chance — that was all 
that was needed. The hovels are being swept away; trim 
and comfortable homes dot the landscape where there were 
emptiness and desolation; dooryards that used to reek with 



CONGESTION REMEDIED 133 

refuse are gay with flowers, and the people who were once 
silent with despair are cheerful, industrious and happy. 

The first financial provision for the Congested Districts 
Board was a grant of the income of $7,500,000, transferred 
from the Irish Church Surplus Fund — the surplus remaining 
after the government bought out the lands and tithes which 
the people once had to pay for the support of the Anglican 
Church in Ireland. This disestablishment was one of the 
belated acts of justice which mark the progress of Ireland 
in the nineteenth century. The first income, about $205,000, 
was increased later, and capital grants were also made. The 
present annual income is about $431,000. 

One of the earliest and most successful experiments by 
the board was the purchase of Clare Island, off the west 
coast of Mayo. Here the experts learned to deal with the 
problems that had arisen under landlordism. Most of the 
land was held by the tenants under the system known as 
rundale, an almost infinitely complicated division and sub- 
division. For example, a man fifty years ago rented a few 
acres 01 ground and by arduous labor converted it into a 
farm. As his sons grew up and his daughters married he 
sublet to sons and sons-in-law small portions of his holding. 
As the soil varied in value, he did not rent each one a single 
portion, but a small part of each of half a dozen or a dozen 
fields. In time these divisions were sub-divided, deaths 
caused new adjustments and allotments, until when the 
board bought the island only the tenacious memories of the 
inhabitants could decide the boundaries of each man's hold- 
ings. And, of course, these holdings were scattered. A man 
who paid rent for ten acres might have it in twenty or thirty 
scattered patches. Many a field of a single acre was tilled 
in tiny plots by six or eight different tenants. This archaic 
system of rundale, indeed, has confronted the board in all 
its operations. Only by infinite patience and infinite tact 
have the members been able to redivide the lands in such a 
way as to give each tenant purchaser a compact farm. It 
was here that they ran counter to complex agreements and 
prejudices. The man who, by the labor of his hands, had 
cieated from stony ground or swamp twenty plots of fertile 
land could not forget the years of heart-breaking labor. 



134 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

The farm offered to him in one compact area might be as 
large and as good as his twenty plots, but into each of those 
tiny patches he had poured his very life blood, and it was a 
bitter wrench to give them up. To allay these suspicions 
and prejudices and to satisfy the passionate longing of the 
people for their own lands have been the most delicate and 
difficult of the board's duties. 

Clare Island, then, was bought from the landlord for 
$25,000. There was not a fence on the island, and the 
cattle and sheep, pastured in common, had to be kept out of 
the tilled lands by watchers. Moreover, the tilled ground, 
as I have explained, was divided into tiny, scattered patches, 
held under agreements and sub-agreements in bewildering 
confusion. The board's first act was to build a seven-mile 
wall clear across the island, separating the grazing land from 
the tillage land. This wall cost $8000. Then the tillage 
land was thrown into a pool, as it were, and divided afresh 
among the tenants, each man receiving in one section an 
equivalent for the scattered patches he had held before. 
More than fifty miles of fences, running from the main 
dividing wall to the sea, were constructed, marking plainly 
the boundaries of each man's farm. In all, the board spent 
more on these improvements than it had paid for the land. 
Yet it lost only a comparatively trifling amount. It resold 
the land for $50,000 to the tenants, wKo contracted to pay 
annuities of three and one-fourth per cent., this covering the 
interest on the loan and creating a sinking fund that wipes 
out the debt in about sixty-eight years. 

Now mark what was accomplished here. All the inter- 
minable tangle of landholding was straightened out, and 
each farmer received a compact piece of ground instead of 
a score or more of detached and scattered patches, with a 
consequent enormous saving in time and labor. The grazing 
lands were divided from the farms by a wall and the farms 
from each other by fences. And the occupiers paid less 
money annually toward purchase of their holdings than they 
had paid formerly in rent. Was it worth while? Clare 
Island is not an abode of luxury, or even of prosperity, as 
the American farmer understands it. But it has been trans- 
formed from an abode of bleak misery to a self-supporting 



CONGESTION REMEDIED 135 

and self-respecting community. In the old days the people 
were so desperately poor that they were forced literally to 
defy the laws. A writ for debt was utterly useless, because 
no one but the inhabitants knew who owned the cattle pas- 
tured on the common, and the bailiff dared not seize the ani- 
mals indiscriminately. Since the readjustment and the 
change from tenancy to ownership the people pay their just 
debts promptly; they are as peaceable as those in any other 
part of Ireland and as comfortable as the inhabitants of such 
an Inhospitable land can be. They must still struggle to live 
decently, but at least the rewards of their labor go to them- 
selves and not to a rapacious absentee landlord. 

The French estate had been purchased and dealt with 
before, and the Leonard estate was taken over later. These 
three properties totaled 6690 acres. Several others were 
added in 1897 and 1898, but it was the purchase of the 
huge Dillon estate in 1899 which marked the end of small 
experiments and the inauguration of the huge scheme of 
resettlement which has been in operation since my former 
visit to Ireland. The Dillon estate consisted of no fewer than 
93,000 acres, with 4300 tenants, who paid rentals aggre- 
gating $100,000 a year. Most of the land was poor and 
most of the farms were "uneconomic" — that is, they did not 
yield a sufficient return to maintain the occupiers at a decent 
standard of living. Yet even this great task was performed 
without loss to the board and to the infinite benefit of the 
people. The total purchase price was $1,625,000, and 
$350,000 was expended on improvements. Nevertheless, 
the 4300 tenants were provided with greatly improved hold- 
ings, and the annuities they pay are about forty per cent. 
less than their former rents, while the board recovered 
not only the amount paid to the landlord, but the cost of 
improvements as well. 

Unfortunately, there was little untenanted land in the 
neighborhood of the estate, and only a few of the tenants 
could be moved. But by the building of roads and fences 
and the construction of extensive drainage works the direct 
value and fertility of the land were so greatly enhanced that 
the condition of all the tenants was vastly improved. Prob- 
ably one-half the farms are still uneconomic, but one-half 



136 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

of these will gradually be made economic within a few years 
by better agricultural treatment. Meanwhile, the Dillon 
estate tenants are virtually owners of their lands, and are 
"as happy," as one of them said to me seven years ago, "as 
a choir of angels." One of the most important improve- 
ments, of course, has been the erection of some hundreds of 
neat, comfortable homes in place of the wretched houses 
formerly used. Prior to the passage of the Land Act of 
1903 the board purchased forty-six estates, with a total area 
of about 175,000 acres and tenants numbering more than 
6500. The total purchase price was about $2,850,000, and 
$850,000 was expended in improvements. [The board paid 
for purchased lands out of advances made by the Land Com- 
mission. As each holding was resold to a tenant the com- 
mission wrote off a corresponding part of the debt.] On 
all these huge undertakings the board's loss was $195,000. 

The Act of 1903 marked a new stage in the work. It 
not only increased the financial provision, but gave the board 
a freer hand in buying untenanted lands and migrating fam- 
ilies from congested districts. But it had numerous defects, 
and these the Irish Parliamentary Party seeks to remedy in 
the bill now pending. 

Meanwhile, we may consider briefly what the Con- 
gested Districts Board has accomplished in other directions 
than the purchase and improvement and resale of estates. 
An enormous work has been done in stimulating better 
methods of agriculture, in improving the fishing industry on 
the west coast and in fostering manufacturing of various 
kinds. In fact, during the earlier years of the board's opera- 
tions agricultural development was regarded as the most, 
important branch of the work, and until the task was trans- 
ferred to the recently formed Department of Agriculture, 
in 1904, most of the board's income was spent in various 
schemes for the betterment of agricultural and stock-raising 
methods. Object lessons were given to inform the people 
wherein they might improve their tilling. Experimental 
farms were established and instructors appointed to spread 
the knowledge of scientific farming and the principles of 
breeding. Stallions and bulls of high class were placed at 
the disposal of farmers, and special encouragement was- 




HENRY 



DORAN, CHIEF LAND INSPECTOR, CONGESTED DISTRICTS 
BOARD. xoxxtx^xo 




FOREMAN SHOWING REPORT TO MR. DORAN (at right). 



CONGESTION REMEDIED 137 

given for improvements in the breeding of sheep, swine and 
poultry. The expenditures were quite heavy — $110,000 on 
instruction, $300,000 on horse breeding, $110,000 on cattle 
breeding, $25,000 on sheep and swine, $35,000 on poultry, 
etc. Not all of the schemes were successful. Indeed, it 
became apparent in time that such work was of doubtful 
value, while the intolerable land system remained to rob the 
farmer of hope and ambition. With the increase in the 
number of tenants who have become owners, the develops 
ment schemes have been of more practical use and perma- 
nent benefits have accrued. In all, the board spent more 
than $700,000 in agricultural work between 1891 and 1904. 
Another highly important and more generally success- 
ful work has been the development of the fisheries of the 
west coast. Through various causes this great industry, 
especially on the west and northwest coasts, had greatly 
declined, and heroic methods have been employed to revive 
it, since in those districts it constitutes an element in the sup- 
port of the inhabitants of the congested districts. The 
board has constructed new or improved piers, slips and other 
harbor facilities in one hundred and forty-eight different 
places, most of the works being for the benefit of the fish- 
eries and some for facilitating oth_r trades, such as the 
export of turf or the landing of seaweed for manure. Other 
methods of encouragement adopted were the making of 
loans for the purchase of boats, nets and fishing gear; the 
supplying of boats on the share system; instruction in fishing 
and the care of nets; the promotion of boat building and 
barrel building and the development of marketing facilities. 
Thus it will be seen that the task confronting the authorities 
was virtually the re-creation of an almost vanished industry; 
but huge as the task was, it was attacked with vigor. The 
policy is, frankly, paternalism, but it is of an intelligent and 
business-like character. The board bought vast quanti- 
ties of fish all along the coasts of Donegal, Mayo and Gal- 
way and shipped some of it cured and some fresh. When 
the industry was no longer an "infant" the board withdrew 
from the work, but there are now sixty private firms engaged 
in fish-curing on the Donegal coast alone. In 1893 the 
autumn and winter herring catch off Donegal was valued at 



1 38 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

$5000; twelve years later it was $200,000. Most of the 
fish are cured, as the transportation facilities for fresh fish 
are inadequate. Donegal herrings usually bring top prices 
in Germany, Russia and America. In all, the board has 
expended upon the fisheries development plans more than 
half a million dollars, in addition to $320,000 for harbor 
improvements. The results have justified the expenditure. 

A still more discouraging problem faced the board in 
its efforts to stimulate other industries, chiefly in the manu- 
facturing line. The main difficulty was that manufacturing 
— and, indeed, any industry except agriculture, fishing and a 
small amount of quarrying — was non-existent in the con- 
gested districts. There were no plants, no skilled factory 
workers. It was necessary to begin at the beginning. What 
"manufacturing" there was was in the way of home indus- 
tries — embroidery, shirt-making, knitting, spinning, lace- 
making and the weaving of homespuns. One of the most 
picturesque and successful works assisted by the board was 
the Foxford Woolen Mills, started by the Sisters of Charity. 
A loan of $35,000 was made, to be repaid in eighteen years 
— and the whole debt has been liquidated. A $6000 mill- 
race was constructed for the factory, and in the earlier years 
$40,000 was paid in subsidies for the training of workers. 
The factory employs one hundred and fifty hands, with 
annual wages of more than $25,000. A technical school is 
maintained for instruction in manufacture of woolen goods, 
hosiery and ready-made clothing and in domestic training. 
Grants were also made to a hosiery mill in Ballaghadereen 
and to four carpet factories in Donegal. 

The encouragement of homespun weaving has been an 
interesting and important feature of the work. Irish home- 
spun is noted the world over, and the board's assistance in 
the teaching of experts, in the grading of webs and in grants 
for the improvement of looms, spinning wheels and dyeing 
has greatly enhanced the value and reputation of the prod- 
uct. Lace-making is a "cottage industry" in Ireland, with 
which many Americans are indirectly familiar. The beau- 
tiful products in applique and crochet which are found in the- 
big American stores are made chiefly in the peasants' homes 
and in convents, where classes are conducted for teaching 



CONGESTION REMEDIED 139 

girls the art. The Congested Districts Board has spent 
large sums in developing this industry, but the returns have 
been highly satisfactory. In poor districts the board has 
built or rented suitable class rooms, pays the women 
instructors and assists in marketing the lace in Dublin, Bel- 
fast, London and elsewhere. More than seventy such 
classes are now maintained, and the annual product averages 
$100,000, about one-fifth of the value of all the lace pro- 
duced in Ireland. As much as $10,000 has been earned in 
a year by the girls of a single class. I visited one of the 
classes in the fine school Father Denis O'Hara, a member 
of the board, established in his parish of Kiltimagh, County 
Mayo. Twenty or thirty girls, from thirteen to twenty 
years old, sat in a cheerful room, working busily under the 
eye of a young woman. Some were beginners, and had first 
to train their unaccustomed fingers to the delicate work by 
experimental stitches. Others, after long training, were pro- 
ducing the dainty, filmy articles such as the teacher proudly 
showed us in the finished state. Each of these girls will in 
time be an efficient worker, able to make a welcome addition 
to the family income through her skill with the needle. 
Cooking, laundering and domestic economy constitute 
another branch of education which is fostered, particularly 
in Donegal. The board employs six teachers, and by a four 
months' course fits those young women who seek domestic 
service to earn higher wages than they could earn if inexperi- 
enced in the mysteries of household work. 

But the scheme of improvement which perhaps has the 
greatest effect, and which certainly produces the most notice- 
able change for the better, is the system of encouraging the 
inhabitants of the poorer congested districts to make perma- 
nent improvement in their farms, buildings and surroundings, 
by means of small grants of money administered through 
local committees. These bodies are known as parish com- 
mittees; they are made up of clergymen of all denomina- 
tions, the poor law guardians and the landlords or their 
agents, all of these being members ex-officio, and six addi- 
tional members elected by the ratepayers of each parish. 
To each committee the board grants a sum varying from 
$250 to $500, and tken invites the occupiers of the poorer 



i 4 o THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

farms to state what improvements they will make if help is 
given to them. Enormous benefits have been produced 
through comparatively small outlay in this direction. The 
principal works are the erection of decent habitations in 
place of unsanitary dwellings and of adequate stables and 
other outbuildings; the making of roads, fences, drains, etc. 
It must be understood that the money aid given is small, 
covering only such materials as the occupier could not afford 
to buy. All the necessary labor must be supplied by the man 
himself. The good comes from the encouragement and 
supervision more than from the financial help. The people 
want to improve their surroundings, and need only a helping 
hand. That the plan is productive of immense good is 
shown by the fact that while the board has expended about 
$300,000 upon it, the permanent improvements made have 
a value of at least $1,500,000. In a single year three hun- 
dred new houses have been erected and 2200 unfit dwellings 
made sanitary and comfortable. 

An important feature of this work is the raising of the 
standard of living. Financial aid is strictly contingent upon 
the improvement of the surroundings of the house by the 
occupier. He must remove the stable refuse a specified dis- 
tance from the dwelling and must turn the cattle out of it if 
they have been, sheltered there. Thus the trilling help 
changes for the better not only the farm equipment, but the 
whole manner of living. Hundreds of homes which helpless 
poverty made unsightly and unsanitary have in this way been 
transformed into homes as pretty and comfortable as will be 
found in the most prosperous rural communities of America. 

But back of all these ameliorative works there remain 
results of the main problem — tenants paying rents they can- 
not afford because certain landlords refuse to be bound by 
the land purchase plan. Therefore the British government 
— or the Liberal Party, which is now in power — has decided 
to apply the final remedy — the only remedy — for the deadly 
land disease which so long kept the people of Ireland in 
economic slavery. The first successful step in the treatment, 
taken after several generations of agitation, was the estab- 
lishment of the tenant's right to a certain ownership in the 



CONGESTION REMEDIED 141 

improvements made by his own labor. The second was the 
establishment of the principle of land purchase, by which 
the tenants are being made actual owners of their lands. 
Now comes the last move — compulsion. 

To effect a complete and permanent cure a vigorous 
dose is needed, and the country is going to get it. It may 
be called an allopathic dose of a homoeopathic remedy. 
Compulsion — by fire and sword and the dreadful enactments 
of greed and prejudice and race hatred — drove the people 
from the lands they had occupied. Compulsion — by care- 
fully and justly framed statutes — is to restore them to their 
own. 

Lack of the power to compel final and complete settle- 
ment of the land problem has been the chief weakness of 
legislation heretofore. The principle of land purchase and 
the urgent necessity for it were advanced more than sixty 
years ago, and through successive statutes, won by arduous 
agitation in and out of Parliament, the principle has been 
made widely effective. The hundreds of prosperous farms 
I have seen during this tour, where seven years ago I saw 
empty plains, testify eloquently to the success of the plan. 
But most of these improvements have been made through 
consent of the landlords. It has been possible for the 
Estates Commissioners and the Congested Districts Board 
to purchase many lands and resell them to the tenants 
because the landlords — whether through good nature or 
want of funds or sheer weariness with the endless struggle 
against public opinion — have agreed to dispose of their huge 
holdings to the authorities. There have been, however, and 
are still many landlords who remain obdurate. They are 
rich, and money does not tempt them; they are prejudiced, 
and argument does not move them ; or they are rapacious, 
and fair offers do not satisfy them. Hence they cling to 
their broad acres of fertile land, while all around them, or, 
at least, within a few miles of their domains, land-hungry 
peasants wear out their lives in a hopeless fight with poverty. 

The land bill now in Parliament — presented by the 
Liberal government after consultation with the Irish Parlia- 
mentary Party — proposes to apply the obvious remedy, com- 
pulsory sale. This measure, dealing with a problem so vast 



1 42 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

and complex as the Irish land question, is necessarily com- 
plex itself; but its main intent is to enlarge the powers and 
increase the effectiveness of the authorities engaged in trans- 
ferring the land from the landlords to the tenant proprie- 
tors. We shall discuss only its bearings upon the work of 
the Congested Districts Board, 

Besides the inability to enforce sales of big estates, the 
boaid has been hampered by the fact that its powers were 
restricted to the congested districts in each county and that 
it could not operate to the fullest extent outside of such dis- 
tricts. Thus, while it could purchase an estate offered to it 
outside a scheduled district, it could do so only to move to 
that land inhabitants of a scheduled district. It could do 
nothing to assist occupiers living near the purchased tract, 
though they might be poorer in fact than the migrated fam- 
ilies. The unit of congestion, it will be remembered, was the 
electoral division and the measure of congestion the average 
ratable valuation. The very poor families outside a district 
which met the test of congestion were excluded from the 
benefits of land purchase because the high value of the lands 
around them kept up the total valuation. Hence such fam- 
ilies might see others, no poorer than themselves, brought 
from a distance and planted on good lands at their very 
doors, while they, residents of the locality, could not be 
helped at all. This defect the new land bill proposes to 
remedy by making the county, instead of the electoral divi- 
sion, the unit. Thus the Congested Districts Board Avill 
have power to operate in any and all parts of the nine coun- 
ties in which there are congested districts. Cork is an excep- 
tion, it being provided that the four rural districts of Bantry, 
Castletown, Schull and Skibbereen shall together be 
regarded as a congested districts county. 

The advantage of this change will be enormous. It 
will bring within the complete operation of the board large 
areas of grazing land in the various counties; will wipe out 
the artificial boundaries between congested and technically 
uncongested areas, and enable the board to deal with bad 
conditions wherever it finds them. And, of course, the 
granting of compulsory powers is vital to a successful work- 
ing of the plan. Under the bill the Congested Districts 



CONGESTION REMEDIED 143 

Board will have the right to purchase any large estate, 
tenanted or untenanted, in any of the counties named, the 
price, when voluntary agreement fails, being fixed by the 
Land Commission after due inquiry. Moreover, the board 
is to be supreme in its own counties, for the bill provides that 
no estate in one of these counties shall be sold under the Land 
Purchase Acts to< any person — whether the tenants or the 
Land Commission itself — without the consent of the board. 
The need for this is plain. Many tenants, in their eagerness 
to own land, purchased their holdings direct from the land- 
lords, and paid too much. Also, they lost the benefit of the 
board's expert knowledge in rearranging farm boundaries 
and its improvement works in the way of roads, fences, 
drains, etc. 

Finally, the bill increases the annual income of the 
board from $431,000 to $1,250,000, which will mean 
bigger projects of improvement, more well-built, comfort- 
able homes, more happiness and prosperity for the people 
whom the board has in charge. 



XVI 
*THE BRIGHTENED LAND 

From Castlerea, County Roscommon, to CasUcbar, the 
county seat of Mayo, is less than fifty miles as the crow flies. 
By the route which I traveled the distance is almost three 
times as great. Between breakfast in Castlerea and dinner 
in Castlebar I traveled one hundred and forty miles of 
country, all of it in the congested districts, where lies the 
most acute problem of the land. I covered, in fact, precisely 
the same ground as I covered seven years ago, and a great 
deal more. For the purposes of the comparison which I 
came here to make between conditions then and now, I have 
the record of those former observations and the evidence of 
my own eyes during this tour through the same territory. 
What has been accomplished has already been discussed in 
statistics and extracts from official reports. It remains now 
to tell the story in description of what has actually been seen. 

There is no guesswork or vague theory about the 
results. They are written indelibly across the face of the 
land — peace and plenty where I had seen wretchedness and 
want; homes where there was desolation; men and women 
who had been starving in swamps or on stony hillsides now 
living in comfort and contentment on fertile farms that once 
were grazing ranches. Not all the scars of injustice have 
been healed. This could not be accomplished in so short a 
space of time. I have seen some haunts of misery as 
wretched as any of those which were described in 1902. 
But they are to disappear. All around them the work has 
been done. The scenes of poverty are isolated amid wide 
stretches of prosperity. I heard the promises given to the 
patient victims of adversity that their turn is soon to come; 
that in time they, too, will know the blessings of real homes 
and the inspiration of self-respecting independence. 

♦Chapters XVI, XVII and XVIII were written in Castlebar, 
County Mayo, in July, 1989. 

144 




TENANT PURCHASER ERECTING NEW PIOME. 



aSSm 



r~ 




NOT PRETTY, BUT COMFORTABLE. 



THE BRIGHTENED LAND 145 

The tour which seven years ago was made by jaunting 
car was made to-day by automobile; the thirty miles were 
expanded to a hundred and forty. The fact has no real 
significance, yet in a way it is suggestive of change. On the 
former occasion it seemed as though a wide territory had 
been covered, but on this the inspection was carried a hun- 
dred miles further, not only along the main highways, but 
through countless side roads and little-traveled lanes. As 
the automobile which was used was the property of the Con- 
gested Districts Board and carried the chief officer of that 
body on an official tour, it had a vivid suggestion in itself 
of how modern aggressiveness is undoing rapidly and thor- 
oughly the wrongs of centuries past. 

That ride I took from Castlerea with sturdy John Fitz- 
gibbon seven years ago left so sharp an impression that the 
scene as we started on this second trip was quite familiar. 
The gray, unlovely street — the dwellers in small Irish towns 
have had too harsh a struggle to achieve civic beauty — 
looked just the same, except that the brightness of a July 
morning gave warmer tints than the pale sunlight of 
November. But the air was chill, despite the season, and 
as the car sped out on the eastward road, skirting the gray, 
ivy-covered wall of a private park, a keen wind sent masses 
of cloud flying across the blue and whipped the roadside 
ponds that gleamed after the night's rain. 

My guide knew in a general way the route of the 
former trip I had taken, and agreed that so far as prac- 
ticable we should follow it. But there was an apt coinci- 
dence in the fact that our first stop was precisely the same. 
There was a simple reason for this — it provided an eminence 
from which we could get a panoramic view of many miles 
of country. Curiously enough, too, at no point in the trip 
was there presented a more vivid picture of the changes 
wrought in Ireland during those few years. From that very 
hill one may see the story that justice has written on the sur- 
face of the land. This may suffice as an apology for quot- 
ing what was written of this scene seven years ago : 

"From the top of a fairy mound, where the elves dance of a 
summer's night, I have seen the Problem of the Land as in a pic- 
ture ten miles wide, * * * mile on mile of the fairest land the 

10 



146 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

mind can conceive, rich with promise of fertility, green still to the 
very verge of winter, smiling, beautiful — and empty. * * * 
Around and below us, on every side, lay the country, flooded with 
the pale yellow light of the winter sun. The view embraced eight 
or ten miles in all directions, a rolling green plain fading away into 
grassy hills. * * * I counted ten houses within vision on that 
great stretch. Each had two or three acres of tilled ground. The 
rest was grass. The only living things in sight were tiny scattered 
flocks of sheep and herds of cattle. Mr. Fitzgibbon translated. ** 

"'We are overlooking several estates,' he said; 'Balff, Irwin, 
Sandford, Murphy — corners of all of them are in sight. Oh, yes, 
there were farms here once, hundreds of them. But all the people 
are evicted. They emigrated to America, or moved, or died. The 
dozen or so farms you see are held by men with long leases. They 
are prosperous, though the rents are very high. The others — there 
was no help for them. The great clearing out started at the time 
of the famine fifty years ago. The people could not get enough to 
eat, let alone money for the landlords. Then the world demanded 
cattle, and the landlords decided to turn these fertile lands into 
grazing ranches. That doomed those who had fought their way 
through the famine. So they all went.' * * * 

"Leaving Mullaghaduhy hill, our course lay off to the south- 
ward, over low, rolling hills and long meadows. The surrounding 
scene was still the same. Beyond the low stone walls skirting the 
road lay miles of green fields, with not a sign of farm or crops. 
Every few miles a thatched house stood by the roadside, with a 
tiny patch of vegetable garden and a cluster of hayricks, brown in 
the sun. These were the huts of the herders. Each man had two 
hundred and fifty to three hundred acres under his care. 

" 'That's it,' said Mr. Eitzgibbon, 'the best land in Roscommon, 
fit to support thousands. And on land where ten families might 
live in decent comfort the only occupants are cattle, a man and a 
dog. A man and a dog ! Not a crop on twenty miles of it — and 
the people wanting for food over yonder.' 

"As we had driven along I had noticed peculiar formations in 
the ground here and there. Across the fields lay low ridges, some- 
times two or three hundred yards long. In some places they looked 
like lines of grass, in others they melted into the level ground. 
They were grass grown. I asked what they were. 

" 'The remains of walls and ditches of the old farms,' answered 
Mr. Fitzgibbon. 'You'll find them all over these lands. When the 
tenants were evicted the walls were thrown down and grass grew 
over the places. You will see here and there a clump or row of 
trees. They mark where the farmhouses used to stand. The houses 
were leveled, and the walls that inclose the road we are now on 
were built of stones that once sheltered evicted tenants.' 

"It was ghastly. I began to see these marks of devastation 
everywhere. The fields on all sides were scarred with the green 
ridges, as though the whip of oppression had left great welts on the 
surface of. the land. In two or three places we came upon the 
crumbling ruins of houses which for some reason had not been 
carried away. There was one of which the four walls still stood, 
with the chimney, though the roof had disappeared years ago. We 



THE BRIGHTENED LAND 147 

could still trace the outlines of a little garden and the remnants of 
a stable. A hare scampered away as I peered through a gaping 
hole where there had been a window." 

So the story ran, as simple and accurate a description 
as I could write of the desolation I had seen from the 
top of this very mound and in a short drive from it. The 
scene came back vividly as I climbed the little eminence. 
And I looked upon it again — the same land, but so mar- 
velously different! Leaning against the wind that came 
booming over leagues of rolling plain, we looked off east, 
north and south. It was one great farm ; not one actually, 
but one in the rich beauty of fertility and busy cultivation. 
Where I had seen thousands of acres of empty grass lands, 
tenanted only by roaming cattle, I saw now a wide plain 
carpeted with fields of growing crops. Where I had counted 
ten houses — the meager, thatched huts of poor herders — I 
counted thirty, forty, fifty — one for every quarter mile as 
far as the eye could reach. 

Good houses they were, too, standing square and trim 
in the sun — sturdily built of stone, gleaming with white- 
wash, topped with strong slate roofs. Around each house 
lay neatly walled fields, patches of living green in every 
shade — the pale shimmer of oats, the rich color of potato 
plants, the slaty green of cabbages. Near each dwelling was 
a little group of outhouses for the cattle, with a pile of 
brown turf against one wall. The dooryards gleamed with 
bright flowers. 

"And all this has been done in seven years !" I said. 

"Less than that," said the officer of the Congested Dis- 
tricts Board. "This district has been 'settled' for nearly 
two years. Within sight are more than 2000 acres of land, 
made up of parts of several estates. This tract was virtually 
empty. It was used, as you know, for big grazing ranches. 
Now you can see the homes of one hundred families. 
Roughly, five hundred persons have been lifted from hope- 
less poverty and made independent in this single section 
under your eye." 

I looked again across the wide plain, which had been 
so vacant and now glowed with life. From chimneys here 
and there smoke was whipping in the wind. In a field a 



148 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

quarter of a mile away two men were cultivating potatoes, 
moving down the rows with steady, rhythmic movements. 
Along a road jolted three carts, piled high with turf from 
a distant bog. At the door of a cottage near the foot of the 
hill stood a woman, shading her eyes with her hand as she 
looked after a group of children on their way to school, and 
down the wind came the sound of the fresh young voices, 
laughing and singing. 

Having studied attentively some hundreds of pages of 
official reports bristling with statistical information, I was 
fairly impressed with the magnitude of the improvement 
made during the last seven years by the Congested Districts 
Board. But, after all, figures are not the most effective evi- 
dence. The sight of one trim, comfortable home where 
there had been a wretched hovel, or of a dozen prosperous 
farms where there had been empty pastures, carries more 
conviction than a ream of dry statistics. I accepted the 
official reports as a matter of course. I learned from them 
that so many thousand acres had been purchased from the 
landlords and resold to the tenants; that so many thousand 
families had been lifted from poverty to independence; 
that so many millions of dollars had been expended for 
estates, for road building, for drainage, for new houses 
and other improvements. These facts were striking, and 
bore sufficient testimony that the poorer districts of Ireland 
are benefiting by a remarkable economic revolution — the 
making of the helpless tenants into independent landholders. 
But until I stood on this hill and looked over that wide, fer- 
tile plain, dotted with the homes of nearly a hundred fami- 
lies, I had but faintly realized what the imposing array of 
figures meant. Until then I had not understood the accuracy 
of John Dillon's statement: "The whole, face of the land 
has been changed." 

Vivid as was the story told by this bird's-eye view, how- 
ever, I wanted to learn some details. It seemed to me that 
in one of the houses I might find evidence more convincing 
than any description of conditions now as contrasted with 
conditions seven years ago. I made this suggestion to the 
officer of the Congested Districts Board who was my guide. 



THE BRIGHTENED LAND 149 

"Select any house in sight," he said, "and go and talk 
to the family." 

We came down from the hill, climbed the wall and 
descended by a rocky lane to the plain. I chose the first 
house we reached. It was two stories high, built strongly 
of stone, with a slate roof. Plain beyond the point of 
severity, it had not a single hint of beauty or art to recom- 
mend it. The government has undertaken a work so vast 
that it has deemed it wise not to expend energy or money in 
producing artistic dwellings. This seems a pity, for surely 
there is an economic value in beauty, and the housing of the 
people in buildings of such forbidding plainness tends to 
discourage aspirations toward higher things. But this 
seemed a very subordinate issue when I remembered the 
squalor and misery in which these people were living a few 
short years ago. The house stood about fifty feet from the 
road, the "front yard" filled with growing cabbages of enor- 
mous size. We passed around one end, and at the back 
door were greeted cheerily by a little woman of middle age 
but youthful spirits. She came out, wiping her hands on her 
apron, beaming with welcome and smiling proudly when we 
asked permission to look around her place. 

"Indeed, sir," she said, "I'll be glad to have you see. 
Sure we're not as tidy as we might be to-day, but we're com- 
fortable, and that's much." 

She walked with us to the end of the yard — it was 
paved with cobblestones — and showed us the stable and 
other outhouses. These, too, were of stone and slate 
roofed. At one end of the stable was a huge pile of turf, 
three months' supply of fuel. At the other end was a con- 
crete pig sty. 

"Where you formerly lived," I suggested, "you had 
no such arrangement as this? You kept the cattle in the 
house?" , 

A shadow passed over her face. 

"We did, sir. We did that. But God knows it was no 
fault of ours. We lived as we could, and it was bad living. 
It was four miles from here, ten acres of hillside, that my 
man and I and the children had to pick the stones out of 
with our hands. We never had a crop that would keep food 



150 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

in our stomachs for a year. Every summer my man and the 
big boys had to go to England and do farm work to get 
enough money for the rent and to carry us through the 
winter. Now, you see " 

She pointed at the house and then at the fields which 
climbed the slope. A quarter of a mile away the husband 
and son could be seen, up to their waists among the dark 
green of the potato plants, working steadily — and working, 
not for another, but for themselves. 

"It is all different," she said, simply. "And, please 
God, it will stay different." 

"What rent did you pay?" I asked. 

"Three pounds a year. This was for ten acres of 
worthless land and the bit of a house — a wretched house, 
sir — I'm sick now to think of it." 

"And now?" 

"Now, sir, we have twenty-six acres of land, all of it 
raising good crops. We have two cows and a calf, a pig 
with a growing litter and forty chickens. For the house 
and stable and land we pay £20 a year. This is not rent, 
you see, sir. We're buying the whole place. We'll be land 
owners ourselves," and she smiled happily. 

Here was a difference. This family, living in unspeak- 
able poverty, were able to pay $15 a year and feed them- 
selves only by sending the stronger members to England 
every year. Now they were living well, in a comfortable 
house instead of a hovel, with plenty of good, nourishing 
food, and were paying $100 a year, not for rent, but in 
purchase instalments. 

"Are you satisfied you can pay six or seven times as 
much as before?" I asked. "Isn't that a big burden to 
assume?" 

"Sure, sir, we'll do it, please God. We came well 
through the first year, though we lost a calf that broke its 
leg in a gate. 'Tis a hard struggle, but we don't look for 
ease. We are working for ourselves, do you see, and that 
makes it better." 

We went into the house, passing the concrete chicken 
house built against the outside of the chimney, so that the 
fowls have the benefit of the warmth in winter. At one side 



THE BRIGHTENED LAND 151 

of the back entrance was a small room used as a dairy. We 
entered the main living room, kitchen and dining room in 
one. It was lighted by a large window. The concrete floor 
was spotlessly clean and the room held substantial furniture. 
On a dresser against the wall were dishes and a gleaming 
array of pots and pans. There was no range, but in the big 
fireplace a pile of turf glowed, ample for giving warmth and 
for cooking. In a wooden cradle of the old-fashioned "ark" 
shape a baby slept peacefully, a cat curled up at its feet. A 
tall, shy girl, barefooted, was drying dishes. Three other 
children played on the floor. 

"Twelve children," said the mother, cheerfully. "Ah, 
they're a great comfort to us. The two oldest boys are on 
the works (employed by the Congested Districts Board on 
road building or drainage), the third is out in the potatoes 
with his father, one is away to market and three are at 
school." 

From this living room opened another, in which the 
woman had made some effort to create the atmosphere of a 
parlor. A stairway led to the second floor, where there were 
three bedrooms. 

As we walked out to the gate the Congested Districts 
officer talked encouragingly to the woman of improvements 
that might be made in the homestead. She assented eagerly. 

"Ah, your Honor, we'll try so hard, indeed we will. 
But it's a struggle, with twelve children." 

"But you must fight it out," was the advice. "You've 
got a start now, and you're doing ever so much better than 
before. You must try to live up to your new opportunities. 
The government has made this chance for you; it can do 
nothing more. The future is in your own hands. You must 
keep yourself afloat. It's sink or swim now." 

"And it'll be 'swim,' your Honor," cried the little 
woman, heartily. "Please God, we'll make a home here 
that the children '11 be proud of. Sure, I don't complain of 
the work. When I think of that place we left, and the fine 
little farm we have now, it gives me heart to go on. We'll 
do better, and never worse, please God." 

So we left her, as she turned back to her work with a 
prayer on her lips. 



XVII 
THINGS SEEN 

In the one-hundred-and-forty-mile trip through typical 
sections of the congested districts the writer had every 
opportunity for examining at close range the remarkable 
work that has been done toward ameliorating the condition 
of the inhabitants of a large territory. Now, as seven years 
ago, he used not second-hand information, but the evidence 
of his own eyes. Then he told of poverty and helplessness 
and injustice which he actually witnessed; now he describes 
upon the same basis of ocular demonstration conditions of 
prosperity and comfort and hope in identically the same sec- 
tions of the country. To show the extent and thoroughness 
of this investigation, I shall set down a brief, consecutive 
record of the tour I made, with the chief land inspector of 
the Congested Districts Board at my side to explain the 
meaning of every piece of work accomplished, under way or 
projected. 

Leaving Castlerea, County Roscommon, our motor car 
traveled about four miles in a southeasterly direction. 
Reaching Mullaghaduhy hill, we had a view, as already 
described, of several miles of land, formerly grazing 
ranches, upon which nearly one hundred families have been 
placed. These families were brought — "migrated" is the 
official term — distances varying from four to twenty miles. 
They had occupied miserable bog and hillside holdings, 
where even the most heart-breaking labor could not produce 
enough to support them. Placed on these fertile lands, in 
neat, comfortable houses built for them, they are paying 
their own way, and for the first time in their lives know the 
life-giving joy of independence. For it must be understood 
that there is no mushy philanthropy about this great eco- 

152 



THINGS SEEN 153 

nomic work. The wise men — Irishmen all — who compose 
the Congested Districts Board have neither the power nor 
the desire to pauperize these victims of the villainous old land 
system. A chance — that is all the tenants get when they are 
created land owners. It is true that certain works, which 
are not directly reproductive, are paid for out of the income 
of the board; but very nearly all of such expenditures, 
such as for drainage and buildings, are charged to the 
land as it is sold to the tenants. The cost is added to the 
sale price and repaid in the yearly instalments of purchase 
money. Besides the opportunity to make a decent living, 
the new land owners have the consciousness that they are 
receiving no gift of government charity, but by their labor 
under just conditions are paying for their farms, the build- 
ings and all improvements. 

Swinging to the north through the little village of 
Castleplunket, the car passed through good farming land to 
the town of Bellanagare, and a mile or so to the southeast 
of that point brought us to Rathnallog. Here the opera- 
tions of the board were seen in a different phase. A big 
estate had been cut up into small farms, and upon each hold- 
ing was being erected a slate-roofed house of stone, with 
trim outbuildings. In this one section twenty-two houses 
are in course of erection, some of them being almost ready 
for occupancy. Returning through Bellanagare, the course 
lay northwest to Frenchpark, through sections of the great 
Dillon, Murphy and de Freyne estates. These large prop- 
erties were purchased several years ago by the board, and 
the work has created decent living conditions for several 
thousand families who had existed in helpless poverty. 

Not in every case, it must be understood, can the board 
confer an adequate amount of land. Congestion of popula- 
tion in some districts is a stern fact which cannot be over- 
come. But in these cases the rearrangement of scattered 
holdings into compact farms; the draining of wet land; the 
building of roads into districts lacking easy access to mar- 
kets, and the assistance of holders toward improving the 
condition of the houses and outbuildings have worked a 
marvelous improvement. In passing, we may get an idea 
cf the magnitude of the work by examining the records in 



i54 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

the case of the three estates just mentioned — Dillon, Mur- 
phy and de Freyne. Here are the figures: 

Acreage, tenanted, at time of purchase 123,440 

Acreage, untenanted, including bog 11,878 

Acreage, total 135,318 

Rent that was paid annually by tenants $157,370 

Number of tenants 5,961 

Purchase price paid by board, unimproved.... $2,712,455 
Expended, by board for improvements $703,090 

A little northwest of Frenchpark we left the main road 
and ran a short distance to Callow. Here we saw a large 
area of grass land which in June, 1909, was divided into 
holdings. Within sight twenty or thirty houses were in 
course of erection, and scores of men and teams were busy 
cutting roads into the heart of the tract for the use of the 
farmers. Within four months every one of the houses was 
to be occupied. Coming back to the main road and travel- 
ing westward, we inspected a remarkable bit of engineering 
work on the Lung river. To drain some wet land, the board 
has diverted the river into a new channel. After passing 
Ballaghaderreen the course lay southwest and then west 
nearly to Kilkelly. Here, in the townlands of Tavraun and 
Glentavraun, I saw seventy-five new houses, erected during 
the last two years. This group constitutes another phase of 
the board's work, upon which I have not yet touched. The 
houses were not built by the board, but by the landholders 
themselves, under the board's direction. Only small loans 
were made, but the trifling assistance given had stirred the 
landholders to help themselves to this extent. The seventy- 
five houses offered eloquent testimony to the ambition and 
industry of the farmers when an opportunity for betterment 
by their own labor is offered to them. 

Thence the car ran due north to Charlestown, from 
which place we made a circuit of ten or fifteen miles in the 
open country. Two interesting features presented them- 
selves on this detour. One was the deepening of the Curry 
river for drainage purposes, the other a hamlet of poor 
houses, where the wretched conditions I saw seven years 
ago still exist, the board having been unable as yet to acquire 
decent lands for the tenants. A straight run westward 



THINGS SEEN 155 

through the Swinford district brought us to Foxford, 
where a notable feature is the woolen factory conducted as 
a successful commercial enterprise by Sisters of Charity. 
Climbing through the rugged mountains that surround 
Lough Cullen, we crossed the narrow strip of land which 
separates it from Lough Conn, amid scenery as wildly beau- 
tiful as can be found in all Ireland, and thence ran easily 
down to Castlebar. 

Next morning, before starting eastward again, we 
made a ten-mile detour to the southwest of Castlebar to 
visit a colony of "migrants" who have been settled in their 
new places for eight or nine years. Here I saw the mar- 
velous work of the board in full fruition. The land is poor 
— it was impossible to find better land in the neighborhood 
for those who needed it — but the people have made a brave 
fight for themselves, and they have won. The little farms 
were bright with growing crops, the houses gleaming with 
paint and whitewash. Few that I saw lacked beds of 
flowers in the dooryards, and many had climbing roses that 
reached the eaves. The cattle looked sleek and well fed. 
School houses that we passed were filled with rosy-cheeked, 
bare-footed children. The problem has been settled and 
settled right. The people got their chance, and they are 
living up to it. Not one has failed to make his purchase 
payments. Where there were poverty and wretchedness 
under the system of landlordism there are peace and content- 
ment under the system of ownership. 

One photograph I took in this neighborhood will illus- 
trate the story of what the land reformation means when it 
is completed. The board built for a man for whom it pro- 
vided a farm one of the serviceable but hopelessly plain 
houses. He moved into it, with his family, and cheerfully 
undertook to pay, in purchase instalments, six times as much 
annually as he had paid in rent for a stony strip of hillside. 
Once he was settled there, under contract to the govern- 
ment, supervision and advice were withdrawn. That is the 
invariable rule. The board is paternalism personified in its 
operations, but the paternalism is of a Spartan character. 
There is no coddling, no fussy interference or officious offers 
of aid. The board has a deliberate policy to let each family, 



1 56 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

once placed on the road to self-support, work out its own 
economic salvation, and it is gratifying to know that in 
every single case I investigated the men and women con- 
cerned were perfectly satisfied with the arrangement. 

This man, then, with his family, found himself pos- 
sessed of twenty-tw r o acres of fairly decent land, with a 
section of bog from which he could cut turf for fuel; a 
comfortable but rather ugly house and the necessary out- 
buildings for a small farm. These were to be his own, upon 
certain yearly payments, less than the rent he had paid for 
T a wretched hovel on the hill. He might have been content 
with the place as it was. It sheltered his family, and that 
is what a house is primarily for. During all the years they 
lived in the thatched hut they had never had the money or 
the heart to make an improvement. There was no incen- 
tive. In the new environment, however, it was different. 
Within two years the man had built a porch, with a window, 
at the front door. This alone added fifty per cent, to the 
attractiveness of the place. Lace curtains appeared at the 
windows. The frowsy front yard was plowed up and beds 
of flowers planted. A neat hedge was set out along the 
road, and climbing roses made patches of color against the 
walls. When I saw this place it was as trim and attractive 
as many a prosperous American farmhouse. Said the Con- 
gested Districts Board man : ^ 

"I am prouder of things like that, with which we have 
had nothing directly to do, than of any of the projects which 
we undertake for the people themselves. It is a great thing to 
build roads and fences and drains and houses; it is a greater 
thing to stir the ambition of helpless people and to see how 
their spirit expands under the sunshine of opportunity. We 
gave that man a chance, that's all. The house was a mere 
shelter when he got it — weatherproof and comfortable, but 
wholly lacking in beauty. You see what he has made of 
it — a pretty home. He has done all that himself, without 
even a suggestion from us. The effect upon his own family, 
upon his children, must be obvious. But it has its effect 
upon the whole neighborhood. In time every house within 
sight will be improved. The example is irresistible. After 
all, what we do, valuable as the work is, is merely prepara- 



THINGS SEEN ■ 157 

tory. We help a little, but the big thing is that we teach 
the people to help themselves. And it is encouraging to see 
how quickly and vigorously they grasp the lesson and put it 
into practice." 

Next day a run to Kiltimagh and around the neighbor- 
hood, and thence to Claremorris, completed the tour. 

In this tour of the congested districts I traversed many 
miles of country, almost every acre of which bears marks of 
the huge schemes of improvement which the Congested Dis- 
tricts Board is carrying out. The transfer of families from 
worthless land to fertile farms; the rearrangement of hold- 
ings in compact form, instead of the scattered patches 
resulting from many years of complicated customs of 
tenure; the driving of roads into inaccessible tracts; the 
building of drainage works, which permit the reclamation 
of wet lands; the erection of sanitary dwellings and out- 
buildings — all these enterprises combined have worked a 
marvelous change. 

Nowhere in the world, perhaps, has there been the 
application of a more elaborate system of paternalism ; for 
no> other method could cope with the conditions fostered by 
centuries of injustice. But the paternalism has been of a 
highly intelligent character, and strict regulations, rigidly 
enforced, have made it a stimulus instead of a deterrent to 
individual effort and self-support. Reference has been 
made to the large number of new houses erected for tenants 
who have been made owners of new lands. This constitutes 
a very important part of the board's work, but it is only a 
part. It is gratifying to know that the transformation of 
this unfortunate district of Ireland is due in great measure 
to the ambition and energy of the people themselves, stimu- 
lated by the assistance and supervision of the board. We 
passed, for instance, a trim little farmhouse which was obvi- 
ously a home of comfort and prosperity, and I congratu- 
lated the officer of the board upon this evidence of effective 
work. With far more pride than he had pointed out opera- 
tions of the board itself he explained that this neat little 
home had been built by a man who formerly had occupied 
a wretched hovel. 



158 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

"There was little that we could do for him," he said. 
"There was no land available to which he could be migrated. 
But we rearranged the holdings in the district and provided 
him with a compact farm equal in area and value to the 
thirty-five scattered patches that he had rented in the neigh- 
borhood. Also, we made a main drain, which gave this 
man and others in the district an outfall into which he could 
carry his own short drains, and so improve the quality of his 
land. As to the house, it should be understood that the 
board does not erect new dwellings except for migrants 
moved into new districts or in cases where the rearrange- 
ment of holdings makes it necessary to remove houses; then 
others are built for the purchasers. 

"But in this case, the house being conveniently situated 
upon the rearranged farm, improvement or replacing of it 
was the duty of the holder. The board prepared the plans, 
made a small advance and supervised the work, and the 
money advanced was added to the sale price of the holding. 
In other words, the man will pay a small additional sum 
in the purchase annuity, and so in time liquidate not only 
the cost of the land, but of the new house and the outbuild- 
ings as well. 

"The work was all done by himself and men whom he 
could get to work for him. Usually the board's advance 
covers the manufactured material necessary, such as dressed 
lumber, slate and hardware. The rough material, such as 
stone, sand, etc., as well as the labor, is supplied by the 
new owner." 

There are, in fact, four general plans in operation, which 
are responsible for the astonishing improvements which have 
brightened the land and the lives of the people in the con- 
gested districts during the last few years. These are : 

First — Erection by the board of new houses and out- 
buildings for migrants moved to new land, or where such 
work is made necessary by rearrangement of holdings. 
Part of the cost of improvements is added to farm's pur- 
chase price, and repaid by the tenant purchaser in small 
annual payments. 

Second — Free grants of money by the board to parish 
committees, which in turn distribute the money to poor land- 



THINGS SEEN 159 

holders for prizes for improvement works. These grants 
are not repayable. 

Third — Loans and free grants by board to tenant pur- 
chasers who desire to make improvements on their holdings 
while the estate is in the board's hands. Loans are repay- 
able. 

Fourth — Loans to tenant purchasers owning lands 
which form part of estates which have passed out of the 
board's hands to the new owners. These are repayable. 

"No means adopted by the board," said the chief 
Onicial, "is likely to have such an elevating effect upon the 
home life of the people as the operation of these house 
improvement schemes. Poor landholders over a consider- 
able area of the congested districts have eagerly availed 
themselves of the advantages offered. Thousands of homes 
which were unfit for human habitation because of their 
damp, cold, dirt floors and fixed windows, and because of the 
practice of keeping cattle in the dwellings, have been made 
comfortable and sanitary. Removal of the cattle from the 
houses and of the manure pit from close proximity to the 
dwelling is imperatively demanded before any assistance 
will be given. Slate roofs are substituted for thatch, con- 
crete kitchen floors and board bedroom floors for the deadly 
dirt and movable, double-sash windows for the old immov- 
able kind. In short, where the erection of an entirely new 
dwelling was not called for, or was impracticable, the old 
house has been quite transformed and made not only 
decently habitable, but really comfortable." 

I have learned that under the four plans referred to 
above the following is the record to March 31 of this year: 

Improvements Expended 
executed. by board. 

Plan No. 1 1,348 $498,750 

Plan No. 2 26,983 245,320 

Plan No. 3 7,800 366,100 

Plan No. 4 196 13,470 

Totals 36,327 $1,123,640 

The first plan — the erection of new buildings by the 
board — has already been discussed at some length in preced- 
ing chapters. The second is worth some special mention. 



160 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

This is the distribution of money prizes and free grants 
through parish committees. After twelve years of opera- 
tion this scheme has been found to yield excellent results, 
not merely in the actual improvements wrought in the con- 
ditions of living, but in the spirit of progress and emulation 
which it fosters among the people. It was aimed to 
give opportunities for self-help to the able-bodied men and 
boys of the congested districts, most of whom spend from 
three to eight months a year as migratory laborers in Eng- 
land. There is no employment for them at their homes in 
the winter, and it was thought that their energies might be 
turned during this idle period to the improvement of their 
homes. 

Under the rules, committees for the distribution of the 
money grants are made up in each parish as follows: 
Ex-officio members are clergymen of all denominations, the 
dispensary medical officer, the county councilor of the dis- 
trict, the district councilors for the electoral division and the 
resident landlords, or, in their absence, their resident 
agents; elected members are six residents of the parish, duly 
elected by the taxpayers. 

Having organized and obtained a grant from the 
board, the parish committee announces its plans and receives 
applications for aid in carrying out improvements. It is 
stipulated that the committee shall "select such projects as 
will, in their opinion, be productive of most good, and shall 
give a preference to applicants who' undertake to do rela- 
tively the greatest amount of work with the least assistance." 
The board says : 

"It is the board's opinion that these grants or prizes 
ought to represent but a small proportion of the value of 
the work done if paid for at the current rate of wages. 
The board aims at making these grants barely sufficient to 
afford a stimulus to self-help. The most urgent and impor- 
tant reform is the removal of cattle from the dwelling 
houses. The first grant that can be sanctioned in the case 
of any applicant who has cattle in his dwelling must be in 
connection with the removal of them from his house. Until 
this has been done no grant can be made for any other pur- 
pose." 



THINGS SEEN 161 

The 26,983 projects forwarded under this plan were 
divided about equally between improvements to dwellings 
and erection or improvement of outbuildings. 

Under plan No. 3 a tenant purchaser may obtain a 
loan, and, in some cases, a free grant, provided he carries 
out the improvement work while the estate is in the hands 
of the board. There is a free grant of $7.50 to any ten- 
ant who will remove the cattle from his house, partition 
off a bedroom and put in three windows with movable 
sashes. For the holders of the poorer lands, free grants of 
from $15 to $25 are given toward the erection of outbuild- 
ings and $25 to $50 toward the erection of a dwelling. In 
addition, $125 will be advanced while the work is in prog- 
ress, provided the purchasing tenant agrees to add the sum 
to the purchase price, to be repaid in the annuity payments. 

Plan No. 4 offers similar advantages to small land- 
holders who will make improvements after the board has 
turned over the property. There are, however, no free 
grants. The board offers the following advances: For 
house with slate roof, $125'; house with corrugated iron 
roof, $75; house with thatched roof, $50; stable with iron 
roof, $40. Loans under $50 must be repaid in half-yearly 
instalments, covering principal and interest at three and one- 
half per cent., within ten years; larger sums may run for a 
period not exceeding twenty-five years. 

On one section of the Dillon estate, near Kilkelly, I 
counted no fewer than seventy-five houses, which have been 
erected by small landholders, under plan No. 3, during the 
last two years. The permanent good accomplished by this 
work cannot be measured. Not only have the occupants — 
men, women and children — the inestimable advantage of 
living in healthful, comfortable surroundings, instead of 
amid the shocking conditions inseparable from the old 
system, but they have had the inspiration of lifting them- 
selves to a higher level, and they have furnished an example 
of good sense, thrift and energy which will stir the emula- 
tion of the people for miles around the new homes. 



11 



XVIII 
A REMNANT OF LANDLORDISM 

This little story is in parentheses. It is a glance at the 
other side. Like the account of the Kerry eviction in 
another chapter, it is out of harmony with the series of 
articles, but may be valuable in giving the reader a true 
perspective of economic affairs in Ireland. We have been 
surveying the remarkable works of improvement which 
have been carried on during the last seven years — the trans- 
fer of tenants from worthless bog lands and stony hillsides 
to fertile farms; the building of roads and draining of 
swamp tracts; the erection of comfortable, sanitary dwell- 
ings for families migrated to decent holdings; in short, the 
transferring of many thousands of hapless victims of the 
system of landlordism into independent, self-sustaining citi- 
zens. Now we shall turn aside for a moment and look at 
conditions as they were and as they still exist in isolated dis- 
tricts, where for one reason or another the Congested Dis- 
tricts Board has been unable to operate. The picture is not 
attractive, but it is presented because it is typical of the 
results of the old system and because it serves to illustrate 
how vast is the progress that has been made. No Irishman 
need shrink at the recital, for the conditions are not due to 
any fault of the people concerned. Rather he should rejoice 
that these instances of helpless poverty and stifled ambition 
are now exceptional, and are soon to disappear under the 
operation of the land purchase system and the intelligent, 
helpful work of the Congested Districts Board. 

There is no need to give the name of the hamlet. We 
reached it while making a detour northward of Charles- 
town, near the dividing line between Counties Mayo and 
Sligo. The country, for the most part, was agriculturally 
poor. Sometimes for miles the road wound across a deso- 
late-looking bog, built up like a causeway above the flat 
plain of brown, soggy turf. Yet the population was, for a 

162 



A REMNANT OF LANDLORDISM 163 

rural district, noticeably dense. Here and there on the wide 
expanse could be seen clusters of thatched huts, with patches 
of green that showed where scraps of land, reclaimed from 
the bog after the cutting out of the peat, were forced to 
yield crops of potatoes and oats. There is a certain pic- 
turesqueness even about the commonplace operation of turf- 
cutting. The whole surface of the bog was scarred with 
ditches and holes. The turf, usually five or six feet in 
depth, is cut straight down from the surface with sharp 
spades, leaving smooth, perpendicular walls, at the bottom 
of which pools of water form. The peat, cut roughly in 
the form of bricks, is tossed out on the surface and then 
piled in regular heaps from six to eight feet high, the out- 
side lumps being cunningly arranged so as to shed the rain 
and keep the interior of the piles dry. After a few weeks' 
exposure to the air the turf dries sufficiently to be used as 
fuel. It is carried to the homes in carts or in huge baskets. 
These creels are borne by donkeys, or often by men and 
women. 

At the edge of one of these great bogs we came upon 
a small section of firm land, parts of it forbiddingly sown 
with rocks and other parts as forbiddingly wet. There 
was, however, a pasture here and there and some fairly 
decent cultivated land. A cluster of dreary-looking 
thatched houses bordered the road on either side, a dozen 
in all. With the officer of the Congested Districts Board, 
I entered eight of the houses, and talked with the persons 
inhabiting them. What I saw and heard pictures the life of 
the poorest of the people here under the old system of land- 
lordism. 

From the roadway we stepped down six inches into the 
first house. I never heard a satisfactory explanation of this 
habit of building houses below the general level, with the 
floor lower than the outside surface. Naturally, the system 
insures a flooding of the house with each heavy rain. This 
dwelling had a single room, lighted only by the doorway 
and a window with immovable sashes. There was no ceil- 
ing. The pointed roof showed on the interior the under 
side of the thatch, black with smoke and soot. The floor 
was of large flat stones, irregularly laid in the dirt. On the 



164 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

hearth smoldered a pile of turf. At one side of the fire- 
place, in the corner, was a rough framework, immovable, 
which served as a bed. A dresser held a few dishes. There 
were two chairs. Just inside the door a calf, tethered to the 
wall, was drinking from a pail of milk. At the end of the 
room opposite the fireplace the floor was a little rougher 
than elsewhere, and straight across it, dividing one-third of 
the room from the remainder, ran a shallow open drain. 
This inclosed the space which in winter is occupied by two 
cows. A woman about sixty years old greeted us pleasantly. 
The conversation ran like this: 

"Good evening! Will you tell me what family lives 
here?" 

"My husband and myself. He is away in the fields 
now." 

"How much land have you?" 

"Six acres four perches. It is very poor land, sir." 

"And the rent?" 

"Three pounds six shillings a year." 

"What else have you?" 

"Two cows, this calf, a pig and some chickens." 

"Do you make a comfortable living?" 

"Indeed no, sir! It is a very hard struggle. Very 
hard ! My husband goes to England three months a year 
or we could never get along." 

"Have you any relatives in America?" 

"Yes, sir; a daughter." 

"Does she help you?" 

"She did for some years after she went out. But she 
is married now and has her own family to look after." 

I found this condition very frequently. The young 
men and women who emigrate almost invariably send remit- 
tances home from year to year — until they marry. Then 
they find their own burdens heavy enough. 

"Well, now," said the official visitor, "don't you think 
it is time that you changed your mode of life? Don't you 
think that if the board gave you a little help you would like 
to have a comfortable house, with buildings outside for the 
cattle?" 



A REMNANT OF LANDLORDISM 165 

"Indeed I do, sir," cried the woman, eagerly. "We 
live like this because we could not help it. We have tried 
so hard to get along, but in all the years we have never been 
able to lay by enough to put us ahead." 

"Well, the board will soon take hold of this district, 
and it is likely that we shall be able to do something for 
you. But remember this : All we can do is give you a 
chance; your husband must help himself." 

"I'm sure he will, your Honor." 

"There must be no cattle in the new house. You must 
try to keep the place clean and neat." 

"Indeed, I'll do that." 

Within a year this woman and her husband will have 
a comfortable home, with eighteen or twenty acres of fer- 
tile land and adequate quarters for the cattle. They will 
never live again as they have in the past. In no single case, 
I am officially informed, has a family once placed on the 
road to a decent living reverted to the primitive methods 
which I saw in this little village of the old regime. We 
entered another house, across the road. The interior 
arrangement, of exactly the same character, need not be 
described. A white-haired old woman, barefooted, sat on 
a stool, throwing refuse on the dirt floor for a flock of 
chickens to peck at. Nearby sprawled a huge pig. The 
woman's story was much the same. The pig and the 
chickens had the run of the house because that had always 
been the custom. 

"But do you mean to say," said the officer, with 
assumed incredulity, "that the pig stays in here at night?" 

"Oh, yes, sir," answered the woman, simply, "but he 
doesn't make much noise. He's a quiet pig, sir." 

Nevertheless, this woman listened eagerly to the prom- 
ise of the board that presently changes would be made which 
would exclude the well-mannered pig from the dwelling. 

Another house. Noticeably neat, this one. The stone 
floor swept, the table scrubbed, the dishes and pans gleam- 
ing. True, two calves lay in a corner, undergoing the 
process of weaning, and a setting hen with an unfriendly 
eye brooded over her eggs in another. Yet the place was 
clean and had an atmosphere of decent comfort. On the 



1 66 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

dresser stood two mugs filled with bright wild flowers from 
the hedgerows. 

Out of the gloom by the fireplace stepped a young girl, 
eighteen years old, perhaps, with a trim, lithe figure. Her 
bright print dress did not reach her bare ankles. Her hair, 
unbraided, fell in black, waves over her shoulders. Her 
pretty face was brightened by dancing blue eyes and daz- 
zling teeth. Her manner was as calm and courteous as if 
she had been conscious of a well-fitting directoire gown and 
was receiving her visitors in a Louis Quinze drawing room. 
It was so gracious that it put me at my ease. I was grateful 
for the feeling. It robbed our visit of a sense of intrusion 
which could not be absent from such an inspection of the 
homes of strangers. The fact that a government official 
was present excused the call; but this girl's frank and easy 
welcome made it a pleasure. 

"My mother is at market," she explained, "and I am 
looking after the house and the children. I am very glad 
to see you." 

"And how are you getting along?" was the official 
question. 

"As well as may be, sir," answered the girl. "We are 
doing the best we can until the board helps us to do some- 
thing better." 

"Well, when the board does get you some land and 
helps your father to build a better house, with a stable and 
a house for the chickens, do you think you'll be able to get 
along better?" 

"Ah, sir," with a flash of the white teeth, "you 
needn't be asking that. Sure I've seen some of the new 
houses, with their big windows and their fine concrete 
floors and all, and I know we'll have a home to be proud of. 
Father is away in England at the harvesting, and the big- 
gest boy is working for the board in the river. They'll both 
be ready for the work when you can get us the new place. 
When will it be, sir?" she added, wistfully. 

"Soon now," was the cheery answer of the government, 
"and you must be planning how to make your new home 
comfortable and pretty. You'll be able to have flowers in 



A REMNANT OF LANDLORDISM 167 

your own yard then, and these calves will have a fine stable 
to live in instead of taking up room in the house. 

"But I am sure you will make the best of your oppor- 
tunities, for I see that you are keeping this house as clean 
and comfortable as you can." 

As we turned to the door the official remarked again: 
"I am glad to see so pleasant a place." 

The girl swept him a curtsey. 

"Thank you, sir," she said. "I am entirely pleased 
with your company." 

It was a quaint expression, and carried a very pleasant 
savor of graciousncss and sincerity. 

We went through the other houses. They differed 
from one another only in degree; none was wholly fit for 
human habitation. A year from now all will be changed. 
Those poor homes will be swept away, the inhabitants 
established in comfortable, sanitary dwellings and another 
colony of self-respecting, self-supporting men and women 
started on its way. 



XIX 

*ONE MAN AND HIS WORK 

This Irish question, which has been bothering the 
British empire for some hundreds of years, and is going to 
bother it a great deal more, is a very simple problem to 
some persons. I have heard it dismissed with a couple of 
airy sentences. 

"The trouble with the Irish," I have been told more 
than once, "is that they would rather agitate than work. If 
there was more industry and less oratory over there we 
wouldn't hear so much of 'wrongs.' If they weren't afraid 
of work and would devote their energies to making a living 
instead of making a noise the thing would solve itself." 

I have heard that easy opinion and variations of it 
many times. The theory that the Irish are lazy is one of 
those curious fables that have survived from the days when 
the extinction of the people was decreed on the ground that 
they were pagan. To those who accept the judgment it is 
of no consequence that the Irish race has lived through 
generations of ruthless persecution and a grossly unjust land 
system and that only by the exercise of the most desperate 
industry has fought off starvation. If it were feasible, I 
should like to take these offhand philosophers to Kiltimagh. I 
should like to set them down in the country round about, 
give them each a house, farm tools and ten acres of average 
land and invite them to go ahead and make a living. It is 
a mathematical certainty that they would starve to death, 
if they did not expire of despair, after a short experience 
of the labor that these "shiftless" Irish perform contin- 
uously and cheerfully. 

The Irish peasant lazy! Let us take a drive with 
Father Denis O'Hara and have a look at the people who 
suffer because they are afraid of work. But first let us note 

*This chapter was written in Kiltimagh, County Mayo, in July, 
1909. 

168 



ONE MAN AND HIS WORK 169 

the changes of seven years in the pastor himself. His hair 
rs a bit whiter and there are more wrinkles around the keen, 
kindly eyes, but his natural vigor is not abated nor his eager, 
constant service decreased. The priest is still a father, 
indeed, to the 4500 men, women and children of his stony 
parish. And with the forward movement in economics and 
industry, visible all over the land, he, too, has advanced. 
Seven years ago he was the parish priest, with all the func- 
tions of counselor, educator and dispenser of justice which 
that office implies in the rural districts of Ireland, besides 
being an active patriot, an adviser of an unfriendly govern- 
ment and one of the administrators of the enormous work 
of the Congested Districts Board. He is all of these things 
to-day — just as devoted in religion, as enthusiastic for self- 
government, as untiring in his unpaid public office, as cheer- 
ful in his separation from ease. But he is a little more. He 
had become a promoter and engineer since I saw him last, 
and conducts a big river work as conscientiously and ably as 
any of his religious celebrations. But there was no change 
in the hospitality of the plain but home-like parish house. 

"Welcome again," said Father O'Hara. "We have 
not forgotten what was written seven years ago. It brought 
us even closer to America — and you know that in all this 
parish there is hardly a single family that has not relatives 
across the water. If it were not for those exiles and their 
kind remembrance of the loved ones left behind I don't 
know what a good many of our people would do." 

"But there has been an improvement, has there not?" 
I asked. 

"There has, indeed," answered Father O'Hara. "I'll 
not show you to-day those wretched hovels on the hill where 
you saw the people and the cattle housed together. There 
are still some — the work is vast, and it is slow — but we are 
turning the corner, and we hope the day is coming when 
every family will have a decent home. You see, we were 
hampered in this district by the lack of really good land. 
Fifty years ago, and before, when the people were driven 
off the good lands into the bogs and up on the rocky hills, a 
great many died and more emigrated. But those who did 
not starve and could not go to America had to take what 



i 7 o THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

land was left. There is no fertile land in the neighborhood 
which we can acquire for them, so they must do the best 
they can where they are. 

"Nevertheless, as you have seen on the roads leading 
here, a great deal has been done. We have constructed 
many main drains through swampy land, and the holders, 
by their own industry, have connected short drains to these, 
vastly improving the quality of the land. Then the board 
has made free grants and small advances, assisting the land- 
holders to erect decent dwellings and outbuildings. And a 
great service to the people has been the rearrangement of 
the scattered holdings. So far as possible, each man is pro- 
vided with a compact farm, equal in area and value to the 
various fields and parts of fields which he cultivated under 
the rental system." 

"I suppose," I said, "that there was a good deal of 
'lost motion,' or wasted energy, in cultivating ten or a dozen 
scattered fields, as compared with a group of fields all 
adjoining?" 

"Quite so," assented Father O'Hara, smiling. "But 
perhaps you haven't realized what I meant by 'scattered 
patches.' " 

He turned to his desk, and then started to unroll before 
me a tracing of a section of his parish. 

"I am going to show you," he said, "the handicap 
under which one man was working. I have used this map 
to astonish members of Parliament before this. Look, 
now!" 

He unrolled the tracing. It was marked with the roads, 
hills, clumps of trees, water courses, etc., of the rural neigh- 
borhood, all accurately drawn to scale. Scattered over the 
paper were patches colored blue, of irregular shape and 
varying sizes. There seemed a great many of them, but I 
did not realize how many. 

"This man," said Father O'Hara, "had eighteen acres 
and some odd perches of land, for which he paid rent. If 
the land had been all in one piece he could hardly have sup- 
ported his family from it, for it was of poor quality. But 
do you know how that land was distributed? In eighty-five 
patches. 



ONE MAN AND HIS WORK 1 7 1 

"Think of that ! Eighteen acres in eighty-five patches. 
He had an acre here and an acre and a half there, you see. 
Then, two hundred yards down this road, a quarter acre. 
On this hill a little section of a field, here another and there 
another, and so on. It is a fact that often a patch of ground 
no bigger than a quarter acre was cultivated by six different 
men, each having a tiny scrap where he raised vegetables. 
This condition had its roots in the system of landlordism, 
which cared for nothing so long as the rent could be wrung 
from the tenants. Sub-letting was carried to an amazing 
degree. A man originally may have rented a compact farm, 
but in the process of time, through arrangement with his 
children and grandchildren and other relatives, the land was 
divided and sub-divided and transferred until the victim we 
see here found himself the tenant of eighty-five little patches. 
What this means in extra labor you can readily understand. 
No systematic cultivation was possible, and modern methods 
of agriculture were out of the question. The man and his 
sons wasted more time going to and from their little scraps 
of land, toiling up and down the hills with heavy burdens, 
than they were able to devote to productive labor on the 
soil. 

"The rearrangement of these scattered holdings, so as to 
provide each man with a farm in one piece, as it were, has 
been a labor requiring infinite tact and patience. No one, I 
believe, would have been equal to it except Henry Doran, 
chief land inspector of the Congested Districts Board. He 
has won the absolute confidence of the people by his justice 
and patience. You can understand how difficult it must be 
to persuade each man that he will receive an equivalent in 
area and value of the little scraps of land he has cultivated. 
The proposition may look all right, but the man remembers 
the weary months of toil he put in reclaiming this patch and 
that from the bog or digging out the stones that lie thickly 
under the surface. When you remember the inhuman labor 
these people have expended to create arable land you need 
not wonder that they cling so passionately to the actual 
pieces of it which they have made with their own hands, and 
that they are doubtful about exchanging any one piece for 
any other." 



172 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

We discussed further the work of the Congested Dis- 
tricts Board, and then Father O'Hara took me to inspect 
his engineering work. It was only a short ride in the auto- 
mobile — out along the country roads, between the stone 
walls that speak so eloquently of the peasants' labor, up 
rocky lanes, over the hills and down into a shallow valley, 
where the little river glides. A deep cut was being made 
through the rocky soil to provide a millrace. The erection 
of a grist mill is the latest project to engage the attention of 
the priest between services. 

"I have borrowed some of the money from the Board 
of Works," he said, "and raised some more in shilling and 
half-crown and five-shilling subscriptions among my people. 
Of course, it is easy to supply the labor. I have the people 
interested now. We'll put the mill here, and from all the 
district round about the farmers will bring the oats to be 
ground. My idea is not only to increase the wealth of the 
neighborhood by having the milling done at home, but to 
teach the people to provide themselves with wholesome food 
produced on their own holdings. They will get more money 
for oatmeal than for the oats as harvested, and they will 
have the benefit of the strengthening diet of oatmeal at 
trifling cost, instead of buying it and paying a profit to the 
manufacturer and dealer." 

From the site of Father O'Hara's engineering opera- 
tion I went in search of evidence that the Irish peasant is 
lazy. I thought I knew something of the district where, as 
the saying is, "the first three crops are stones," but I hadn % t 
thoroughly mastered the facts. We covered a mile or so 
of rocky road, then descended from the car, crossed a quak- 
ing bog and climbed a rough hill. There was grass on it, 
but the surface was lumpy, the turf rising in irregular hum- 
mocks. Half way up the slope we came upon the patch of 
stones shown in the photograph accompanying this chapter. 

"Now, there," said Father O'Hara, "is a field in process 
of manufacture." 

"I see," I said. "All these stones were dug out of the 
ground and thrown here." 

"Yes, they were dug out of the ground," said the priest, 



ONE MAN AND HIS WORK 173 

"but they were not 'thrown' where you see them. They lie 
just as they were dug up." 

Then I began to understand. These stones were not 
the result of work on other fields, but actually were the field. 
I clambered over them and made an examination. The stones, 
mostly round and smooth, varied in size. Some were as 
large as medium potatoes, others as large as footballs; some 
were boulders of respectable dimensions. They lay in irreg- 
ular layers. I moved a patch of the stones and found more 
stones underneath, and still more under those. I went down 
more than a foot before I found earth. As I live to tell it, 
the soil was hidden under eighteen to twenty-four inches of 
stones, every 7 one of which had been dug from that same 
soil. As a matter of fact, the green appearance of that hill- 
side was a sham and delusion. A skin of turf there was, but 
under it two or three feet of stones, with a sprinkling of 
earth. And the owner of the patch had to remove this layer 
by the labor of his hands before he could plant a seed. 

"There you are," said Father O'Hara. "I suppose in 
any other part of the world a man who would attempt to 
make an arable field out of this would be called insane. 
This fellow has been two years at work here, using the few 
months in the year when he is not working in England. 
Another year will see the stones removed, perhaps built into 
a boundary wall. As you see, up to this point he has only 
succeeded in prying them loose from the soil. I make it a 
point to urge the people to do this work, mad as the expendi- 
ture of energy may seem. I said to this man: 'If there was 
work for you at sixpence a day, I wouldn't tell you to do 
this. But if you can't earn sixpence a day, man, you can 
earn threepence a day for yourself by digging out these 
stones.' And so they do it." 

And so I have some photographs to show the next per- 
son who says the Irish peasant is "lazy." 



XX 

♦EDUCATIONAL REFORM 

Because of its devastating effects upon the country and 
the people, the passing system of Irish landlordism has 
always been the most prominent of the evils of misrule. 
There is another long-standing grievance, however, and this 
is the denial of decent educational facilities. That the doors 
so long barred by injustice and prejudice have finally been 
swung open constitutes one of the most important achieve- 
ments of progress in the last seven years. The century-old 
fight of Irish patriotism, culminating during recent years in 
the masterly campaigns of the Irish Parliamentary Party, 
has won triumph at last in the establishment of the National 
University of Ireland — a free, untrammeled, comprehen- 
sive institution of learning, to be owned and governed abso- 
lutely by the people of Ireland themselves. 

How great an advance this is can be understood only 
upon realization of the anomalous and intolerable conditions 
which have ruled in Ireland in the past. The country, it 
should be observed, was literally confiscated by England 
through successive conquests and land-grabbing invasions. 
And the subjugation was made permanent by the deliberate 
withholding of education from the people. In passing, it 
may be noted that even in the matter of education the 
national demands are inextricably associated with the great 
foundation demand for self-government. During all the 
years there has been virtually but one institution of higher 
learning in all Ireland; that is, an institution having the 
prestige and power of public endowment and support. This 
is Trinity College, Dublin, justly famous for its scholarship 
and the high attainments of its graduates, but with a record 
marred by the injustice of which it has been the beneficiary. 

Ordinarily, religion has no proper place in dealing with 
national problems of education, but in this case it cannot be 

♦Chapters XX and XXI were written in Dublin in August, 1909. 

174 



EDUCATIONAL REFORM 175 

excluded from the discussion. Indeed, it is at the very foun- 
dation of the claims which have just been recognized by the 
British Parliament. Two statements of fact will set forth 
the issue clearly: First, four-fifths of the people of Ireland 
are Roman Catholics; second, Trinity College, the only 
institution of its kind in tne country, endowed with Irish 
funds and grown fat upon lands taken from the people, is 
uncompromisingly and aggressively Protestant in its aims, 
its atmosphere and its regulations for the government of its 
members. The circumstances of its founding are vividly 
significant of the course it was to pursue through the cen- 
turies and upon which it continues to-day. Trinity College 
was established by Queen Elizabeth with the proceeds of 
lands confiscated from Irish monasteries and Irish Catholic 
citizens, and its avowed purpose was to propagate the prin- 
ciples of the Protestant religion. For more than one hun- 
dred years it was open only to members of the Established 
(Protestant Episcopal) Church. During the brief regime 
of the Irish Parliament, forcibly brought to an end by the 
Act of Union of 1 800, it opened its doors to students of all 
denominations, but not until 1874 were removed the religious 
tests which barred not only Catholics, but Presbyterians, from 
its offices and scholarships, and it became, in theory, undenom- 
inational. Nevertheless, it is still almost wholly Episcopalian 
in government and wholly so in spirit. 

Sir Robert Peel sought to remove the obvious evil by 
establishing strictly undenominational colleges in Cork, Gal- 
way and Belfast. But here the pendulum swung too far the 
other way. Cork and Galway colleges have been failures 
because they were hopelessly at variance with Catholic prin- 
ciples of education, which insist upon some connection 
between secular and religious teaching. The Belfast insti- 
tution has flourished because its non-religious atmosphere 
has been no offense to the Presbyterian conscience of the 
North. The refusal of the Irish people to send their sons 
to Trinity has been a remarkable form of protest, since it 
involved the rejection of the only means of higher education 
in the country. But when we recall that four-fifths of the 
population is Catholic and that Trinity maintains still the 
inspiration of its founding — to propagate anti-Catholicism 



i7^ THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

— the determination can be readily understood. The Prot- 
estantism of Trinity is militant. Only a few years ago a 
member of the governing board made this declaration : 

"Trinity was founded by Protestants for Protestants 
and in the Protestant interest. At the present moment, with 
all its toleration, its liberality, its scrupulous honor, the 
guardian spirit is Protestant. And I say, Protestant may it 
evermore remain." 

The sentiment may have done the distinguished speaker 
honor and may voice a worthy ambition, so far as the col- 
lege is concerned, but such a spirit surely justifies the charge 
that Trinity is not and cannot be a national Irish institution. 
How cordial is Trinity's invitation to eighty per cent, of the 
people of Ireland may be gathered from a sonnet which 
appeared less than two years ago in the college magazine, in 
which the Catholic churches of the country were described 
as "grim monuments of cold observance, the incestuous mate 
of superstition." 

As a remedy for this long denial of education to by far 
the greater part of the population, the demand of Ireland 
during the last century has been for a truly national univer- 
sity. Obviously, in a preponderatingly Catholic country 
this means that the institution would be Catholic in its 
atmosphere, else it would not be national. There has been 
no demand or desire for a sectarian institution. In 1897 
the Catholic bishops formally declared they would accept a 
university which would lay no religious tests upon students, 
teachers, officers or governors; with a majority of the gov- 
erning body laymen, and with a provision that no state 
funds should be employed for the promotion of religious 
education. As long ago as 1871 the Catholic hierarchy pro- 
posed, as a solution of the question, that the constitution of 
the University of Dublin should be modified "so as to admit 
of the establishment of a second college within it, in every 
respect equal to Trinity College, and conducted on purely 
Catholic principles." Trinity, however, was not ready to 
yield its supremacy, for in 1901, when a royal commission, 
inquired into the whole educational problem, the cry of 
"Hands off Trinity!" was raised, and that institution — the 
main center of university education — was excluded from an 



EDUCATIONAL REFORM 177 

investigation which was to devise means for obtaining such 
education in the country. The commission recommended 
the establishment of a federal teaching university with four 
constituent colleges — the three existing Queen's Colleges in 
Cork, Galway and Belfast, and a new Catholic college in 
Dublin. 

The main idea was carried out in the Irish Universities 
Act of August 1, 1908, establishing the National University 
of Ireland and the colleges at Cork, Galway and Dublin in 
association with it, and a second university in Belfast. While 
the National University will, as stated, inevitably be Catholic 
in spirit and atmosphere, it will be also, and chiefly, national. 
University and colleges will be open to members of all 
creeds. The act distinctly provides : 

"No test whatever of religious belief shall be imposed 
on any person as a condition of his becoming or continuing 
to be a professor, lecturer, fellow, scholar, exhibitioner, 
graduate or student of, or of his holding any office or emolu- 
ment, or exercising any privilege, in either of the universi- 
ties or any constituent college; nor shall any preference be 
given to or advantage be withheld from any person on the 
ground of religious belief." 

Financial provision is also made in the act. The fol- 
lowing sums are appropriated for the purchase of site and 
erection of buildings : 

National University of Ireland and new Univer- 
sity College, Dublin $750,000 

Queen's College, Cork 70,000 

Queen's College, Galway 30,000 

The parent institution is to take over the land and 

buildings of the Royal University in Dublin, which has been 

a mere examining institution, but an entire new plant must 

be erected. There are already good buildings in Cork and 

Galway, which accounts for the relatively small sums for 

those cities. The annual endowments are as follows: 

University College, Dublin $160,000 

Queen's College, Cork 100,000 

Queen's College, Galway 60,000 

The breadth of the curriculum is shown in the estab- 
lishment of faculties in arts, philosophy and sociology, 
Celtic studies, science, law, medicine, engineering and archi- 

12 



178 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

tecture and commerce. Naturally, in view of the ardent 
desire for a fostering of the national spirit, emphasis is laid 
upon the Celtic studies. These will include archaeology, art, 
history, Irish language, music and philology, and Welsh 
and other Brythonic languages. I talked upon this univer- 
sity matter at some length with John Dillon, M. P., who 
has been one of the strongest and ablest advocates of the 
national university project. 

"I attach enormous importance to the enterprise," he 
said. "After confiscation, the most powerful weapon Eng- 
land has wielded against us has been the denial to the 
Irish people of opportunities for higher education. It is to 
be truly a national institution, governed by and responsive 
to the people of Ireland — a free, self-governing university. 
For the first five years the senate is to be nominated by the 
Crown, but so nominated as to make the overwhelming 
majority Nationalists. After the first five years all the 
members of the governing bodies are to be elected. Four 
will be nominated by the Crown, and the others will be the 
chancellor, the presidents of the three constituent colleges, 
persons elected by the governing bodies of the colleges, 
elected by the student convocation, and so on — thirty-five 
members in all. In other words, the authorities will be 
wholly Irish, and that means Nationalist. 

"The only complaint we have is that the endowment is 
insufficient, but that can be remedied. The statutory foun- 
dation of the university and its colleges is sound and satis- 
factory. The system will for the first time provide for the 
youth of Ireland adequate educational facilities. More than 
that, the university will be a center of Nationalist spirit. 
The atmosphere will be Nationalist, every student will uncon- 
sciously absorb patriotism with learning and the university 
will go far to make Ireland once more a nation among 
nations." 

I shall hardly have space to discuss the national schools, 
as the common schools in Ireland are called. They provide 
an instructive example in themselves of the evils and absurd- 
ities of the governmental system. The national school system 
was established in 1833, upon a basis of equity illustrated 



EDUCATIONAL REFORM 179 

by the fact that the controlling board having charge of the 
education of children, of whom four-fifths were Catholics, 
was Protestant by five to two. The effect of this was seen 
in the persistent efforts to Anglicize the children. The use 
of the English language was enforced, although many thou- 
sands of children spoke Gaelic. This might be justified on 
the ground that English was more useful in everyday life; 
but as much could hardly be said for the use as text books of 
histories which extolled the conquest of the country by Eng- 
lish sovereigns and lauded the defection of England from 
the Church to which Ireland clings. Americans, more jealous 
of their public schools than of any other institution, will need 
no emphasis upon a policy so violently opposed to fairness 
and peace. 

Even the "readers" were carefully edited with a view 
to bend the youthful mind toward contentment under the 
ruthless injustices which Englishmen of a fairer generation 
have been glad to remove. Said one book: "On the east 
of Ireland is England, where the Queen lives. Many people 
who live in Ireland were born in England [two or three per 
cent., possibly], and we speak the same language and are 
called one nation." 

The English educational censor, too, had a fatherly 
interest in the tender minds under his care. He condemned 
and suppressed a "reader" which contained Scott's verses, 
beginning: 

"Breathes there a man with soul so dead 

Who never to himself hath said : 

'This is my own, my native land'?" 

Mild as is this appeal to patriotism, the English 
authorities expunged the verses on account of "their ten- 
dency to promote seditious feelings." Perhaps the national 
deficiency in humor has been at the bottom of England's 
refusal to grant Home Rule. This example would seem to 
indicate as much. But delicious as it is, it has not the 
exquisite flavor of Podsnappery to be found in the verses 
inserted in the "reader" in place of Sir Walter's incendiary 
lines. These were by one of the Episcopalian members of 
the board, and ended with the touching couplet : 

"1 thank the goodness and the grace which on my birth have smiled, 
And made me in these Christian days a happy English child." 



180 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

It is not an unpleasant picture — the good Archbishop 
penning the lines which he conscientiously hoped would aid 
in bringing the unregenerate Irish children into the blessed 
state of being English; but imagine the confusion in the 
i minds of the young Joyces and Considines and Dwyers who 
were called upon to recite theml 



XXI 
A SUMMARY 

To those familiar with the long, dark record of Ire- 
land's history the rapid changes of the last few years must 
be impressive. During the tour I have described through 
districts which bore the deepest scars of injustice and pov- 
erty I saw on every hand evidences of the economic regen- 
eration. And while the alteration in this corner of the 
island is perhaps the most noticeable, it is simply one feature 
of the great national advance. As no other nation, in 
modern times, has suffered under so elaborate and crushing 
a system of spoliation, so no other has been the subject of 
such vast experiments in remedial legislation. From the 
savage plundering of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
grew up a government grotesque in its injustice and a land 
system utterly ruthless in its oppression. Under the opera- 
tion of these reciprocating evils every principle of right 
seemed to be extinguished and every natural economic ten- 
dency perverted. The privileges of property, though 
founded upon robbery, wholesale confiscation and merciless 
penal laws, were held superior to all else, even to human 
life. In the matter of land — a matter of life and death to 
two-thirds of the population — the law of supply and demand 
was strangled and the law of force substituted. 

This unnatural treatment inevitably bred unnatural 
conditions. Thus the last century saw the population fleeing 
from Ireland as if it were stricken with plague; untold acres 
of fertile land given over to grazing cattle, while the people 
fought off starvation upon rocky hillsides and desolate 
swamps; despairing revolts against the system crushed by a 
form of martial law, by coercion, intimidation, jury packing, 
eviction. 

But the latter part of the last century saw also the first 
application of the remedy, and that remedy was as excep- 

181 



1 82 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

tional as the disease. A more gigantic scheme of state 
socialism, or paternalism, has never been attempted. The 
British government recognized at last that the monstrous 
evils of former generations could never be eradicated except 
by reversing the whole process of those years. It is the 
operation of this policy which has wrought such marvelous 
changes in Ireland. A brief survey will illustrate the mag- 
nitude of the problem and of what has been accomplished.. 

The great scheme of land purchase — the transfer of 
the land from the landlords to the tenants, the govern- 
ment advancing the money and the new owners repay- 
ing it in annual instalments, with interest — first became 
effective in 1 88 1 . Other acts, broadening the scope of the 
plan, were passed in 1885, 1888, 1896 and 1903, and there 
is now pending still another bill, which will extinguish the 
last vestige of landlordism by making the sale of their 
estates compulsory. Progress was very slow at first, and 
has never kept pace with the demands of the problem, but 
in all, under the various acts, nearly a quarter of a million 
tenants have become owners of the lands they tilled. 

The exceptionally acute conditions of poverty in the 
west of Ireland have been treated, as set forth, by the Con- 
gested Districts Board. Empowered to purchase estates, 
enlarge and rearrange holdings, migrate tenants from con- 
gested to more open areas, encourage agriculture, industries 
and fishing and assist landholders to improve their farms 
and better their conditions of living, the board has worked 
a transformation over a large district. It has expended 
nearly $17,000,000 in the eighteen years of its existence, 
and the result is seen in colonies of comfortable, prosperous 
farms where formerly there was the most dire and helpless 
poverty. 

A special work of the government has been the restora- 
tion of evicted tenants. Thousands of these families sacri- 
ficed themselves for principle in the land wars, particularly 
in the bitter struggle of 1879-80. Then they were rebels, 
and suffered all the rigors of the war which they invited by 
their resistance. But the time came when it was recognized 
that they were "wounded soldiers" and that they have 
peculiar claims upon the government which inherited the 



A SUMMARY 183 

system of injustice. These evicted tenants are being restored 
to the lands which were torn from them by force, or to lands 
of equivalent value. Houses are erected for them, the farms 
are stocked, and after years of suffering they once more are 
on the road to self-supporting independence. 

Paternalism of a still more radical character is being 
applied in the case of the agricultural laborers of the coun- 
try. Their condition was naturally worse than that of the 
tenants. Depending upon their unskilled labor and the 
product of the tiny patches of land surrounding their homes, 
they occupied wretched hovels, not only in discomfort, but 
in constant peril from disease. Several acts for the benefit 
of these laborers have been passed, under which county 
authorities are able to borrow government funds for the 
erection of decent, sanitary dwellings, which rent for the 
trifling sum of a shilling a week. Nearly 50,000 of these 
neat cottages have been erected and as many of the wretched 
huts swept away. Similar work has b^sn undertaken for the 
poor dwellers in the towns, where tenement life has been 
upon the lowest possible scale. Here, also, the local authori- 
ties are empowered to borrow funds and erect sanitary 
houses, which are rented at a very low rate to the artisans. 

And in the swinging back of the pendulum from the 
evils of unchecked landlord rule a point has been reached in 
regard to town tenants which will startle even Americans. 
An act which became effective on January 1, 1907, applying 
to "houses, shops and other buildings in urban districts, 
towns or villages, and occupied either for residential or busi- 
ness purposes, or partially for residential and pardy for 
business purposes," provides as follows: 

"Subject to the provisions of this act, a tenant of a holding to 
which this act applies may, on quitting his holding, claim, in the 
prescribed manner, compensation, to be paid by the landlord, in 
respect of all improvements on his holding made by him or his pred- 
ecessors in title which at the date of such claim add to the letting 
value of the holding, and are suitable to the character of the hold- 
ing, and have not diminished the letting value of any other property 
of the same landlord. 

"Where the landlord, without good and sufficient cause, termi- 
nates or refuses to grant a renewal of the tenancy, or it is proved 
that an increase of the rent is demanded from the tenant as the 
result of improvements which have been effected at the cost of such 
tenant, and for which he has not, either directly or indirectly, 



1 84 THE LAND PROBLEM SOLVED 

received an equivalent from the landlord, and such demand results 
in the tenant quitting his holding, the tenant shall, in addition to 
the compensation (if any) to which he may be entitled in respect 
of improvements, and notwithstanding any agreement to the con- 
trary, be entitled to compensation for the loss of good-will and the 
expense which, by reason of his quitting the holding, he sustains or 
incurs." 

This is certainly drastic, but it should be remembered 
that the conditions in Irish towns are quite unlike the condi- 
tions in American towns. In Ireland the town tenant, like 
the agricultural tenant, has been quite at the mercy of the 
landlord, because the landlord usually owns every foot of 
land in the town. He never sells land; he rents it. Hence 
the tenant has not been able to look elsewhere for land in 
case of disagreement with the landlord or an excessive 
demand in rent. He has had to meet the demand or leave 
the town. This act simply protects the town tenant against 
capricious eviction. If the landlord wants to get rid of him 
he must pay him not only for the improvements he has made 
on the property, but for the good-will of his business. 

That land purchase and the other great reforms have 
brought a steadily increasing measure of prosperity to Ire- 
land there is abundant evidence, none of h more impressive 
than the records of the people's savings. Here are the 
figures for the savings banks conducted by the post office and 
by private enterprise for the years 1 88 1 , 1896 and 1907: 

1881. 1896. 1907. 

Number of accounts 150,097 350.887 5S0.223 

Total deposits $19,010,505 $41.-674,965 $65,445,790 

Education in Ireland, which suffered grievously 
through prejudice and neglect, is at last receiving a respect- 
able measure of attention. The government now makes an 
annual appropriation of $200,000 for improving the school 
houses and $570,000 for increases in teachers' salaries. 
But the most notable advance has been the establishment, 
on August 1, 1908, of the National University of Ireland. 

Assuredly, Ireland is on the up grade. The wrongs of 
centuries are being righted, the curse of landlordism is being 
lifted, economic independence is replacing the system of 
serfdom, a national university is established. What more, 
then, does Ireland want? 

A trifling thing — self-government. 




•4 
» 

ft 

O 
o 

>* 



THE DEMAND FOR 
HOME RULE 

XXII 
*THE CONQUESTS OF IRELAND 

In a public address on July 4, 1909, before a crowd 
in Arkiow, County Wicklow, which cheered American inde- 
pendence as heartily as it cheered Ireland's demands, John E. 
Redmond made this statement : 

"The present budget is unjust to Ireland. With the 
exception of that of last year, every budget since the Union 
has been unjust to Ireland. And I tell you that that will 
continue, no matter what party is in power, until we get 
Home Rule. The only way to stop the robbery of Ireland by 
English budgets is to make the Irish Nationalists a united 
force to obtain self-government for our country." 

Here are other recent utterances by the same man: 

"The demand for national self-government is founded 
by us, first of all, upon right, and we declare that no amelio- 
rative reforms, no number of land acts or laborers' acts or 
education acts, no redress of fimancial grievances, no mate- 
rial improvement or industrial development can ever satisfy 
Ireland until Irish laws are made and administered upon 
Irish soil by Irishmen. 

*Most of these chapters on Home Rule were written in Dublin 
in July and August, 1909. 

185 



1 86 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

"You have heard how much has been done, especially 
in the last twenty-five years, to mitigate the sufferings of 
Ireland on the question of the land and the laborers and 
education. But the doctrine tnat we hold is that none of 
these things, no amelioration of our condition by palliatives, 
can settle the Irish question or can turn this, into a pros- 
perous and contented nation. We say that can be done 
only by Home Rule. 

"I have, as have my parliamentary colleagues, the 
utmost sympathy with every effort at industrial revival ; but 
I say here, without the slightest hesitation, I believe that 
until you have first freedom in the land you will never be a 
prosperous country. I say that the one remedy is Home 
Rule." 

These are fairly strong words. But they accurately 
represent the views of the great mass of the people of this 
country. Mr. Redmond is chairman of the Irish Parliamen- 
tary Party and recognized leader of the Irish race through- 
out the world. In this he speaks for the nation, or for a 
very large majority of it. 

"What does Ireland want now?" asked Pitt, wearily, a 
century ago, and "What does Ireland want now?" many 
Englishmen echo to-day. Indeed, I have heard the same 
flippancy from Americans. At the bottom of it, of course, 
is ignorance. Few Englishmen understand, or have any 
desire to understand, the Irish question in its complex 
phases; and too many Americans, through intellectual indo- 
lence, have accepted the view industriously propagated by 
Toryism, that the Irish demands are totally unreasonable 
and the race incapacitated for the affairs of government. 

I purpose to examine, from the viewpoint of an Ameri- 
can who has taken the trouble to study the problem histor- 
ically and by actual observation, what these demands are 
and what measure of justice there is behind them. The 
term Home Rule, of course, carries its own definition. Ire- 
land demands that her laws, now made and administered by 
a people foreign in blood, in religion and in sympathy, shall 
be made and administered by Irishmen. She demands self- 
government, instead of government by an alien class; a gov- 
e . ::ment which shall be created by the votes of the Irish 



THE CONQUESTS 187 

people and shall be responsive and responsible to them — in 
other words, a free Irish Parliament and an Irish executive 
responsible to the elected body. There is, in truth, a section 
which goes far beyond this, which demands complete sepa- 
ration from Great Britain and the erection of an independ- 
ent nation. But this policy, however inspiring it may be to 
men whose very souls have been embittered by brooding 
upon past wrongs, does not come within the scope of prac- 
tical politics at this time. Whatever the future may hold, it 
is fairly obvious that Home Rule, as it is usually defined, is 
the vital and living ambition of the people. 

Are all the great reforms, then, which have been dis- 
cussed in previous chapters to be dismissed as useless? 
Hardly that, yet they alone can never satisfy the Irish 
people, can never establish peace and prosperity on a sound 
and permanent basis. The inmates of an almshouse are 
free from care; all economic problems have been solved for 
them; yet they often are so ungrateful as to yearn for some- 
thing else — independence. The metaphor is extremely 
faulty, yet it has a hazy sort of application to the Irish 
demand for Home Rule. The impossible system of land 
tenure, with all its attendant evils, is being wiped out; the 
people are being made owners of their Ian' 1 3 — paying full 
price for them ; control of local affairs L«s been put into 
their hands ; an earnest and successful effort is being made 
to lift the more helpless victims of poverty; equality has 
been granted in facilities for higher education. And still 
there remains the great unsatisfied demand for self-govern- 
ment. Still Ireland remains sullen, resenting and resisting 
the system which affronts the national spirit, and which it 
declares is cumbersome, costly and wholly inefficient. 

These charges will be taken up in detail. The govern- 
ment of Ireland will be examined from the viewpoints of 
utility, expediency and political justice, and the national 
demand explained more fully. Meanwhile, it may be 
remarked that no one can understand the Irish question 
without some knowledge of the history of the country. 
The evils of misgovernment and of land oppression that 
are visible to-day are not of recent growth; they have their 
roots in centuries long past. The half-starved peasant in 



1 88 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

Connemara is the descendant of the victims of Tudor 
aggression; the grotesque extravagance and futility of Dub- 
lin Castle were founded in the seventeenth and eighteenth 
centuries. Before attempting to deal, therefore, with the 
present system of government in Ireland we shall take a 
rapid survey of the country's history. Assuredly this is 
accessary for American understanding of the problems, for 
even in matters historical the English and Irish viewpoints 
are hopelessly at variance. To most Englishmen — though 
to less now than at any other period — the story of Ireland 
is the story of a backward, "impossible" people, who for 
centuries have retarded their growth and the spread of 
civilization by resisting the blessings of English rule. Few 
of them nowadays will go so far as to defend the atrocities 
of the "conquests," plantations and confiscations, but at 
heart they do believe that most of the woes of the country 
are due to inherent defects in the Irish character, especially 
that defect which prevents recognition of English institu- 
tions as the best for all races under the sun. 

The evils of the past, they say, have been atoned for; 
justice is being done; why rake up wrongs of history that 
should be forgotten? Why persist in dwelling upon the 
past? Irish history is not taught to English children, and 
only in recent years has its teaching to Irish children been 
permitted. To Irishmen, on the contrary, the history of 
their country is a constant inspiration. The land is sown 
with ruins, every one of which is the center of heroic legend 
or story. The record is inspiring because it is filled with 
the names of brave men and the tales of brave deeds — 
because, in fact, the very suppression of Irish nationality 
and Irish progress has left the people little else to venerate. 
In the face of England's stolid assumption of superiority, 
it is comforting for them to recall that while England was 
still in the mists of paganism Ireland was bright with a 
rude sort of culture and a Christian civilization, and that 
until brute force and persecution had done their wo/k Ire- 
land was the custodian of knowledge and the teacher of 
Europe. The history of these early days, much of which is 
legendary, may be treated very briefly. Geographically 
isolated, Ireland escaped Roman invasion and bears no 



THE CONQUESTS 189 

marks of Roman institutions. Her development was inde- 
pendent, from within. During the first centuries of the 
Christian era, students declare, there existed in the land a 
civilization of an advanced type, considering the time. 
Tribal organizations ruled society, each having an elected 
chieftain. The tribes were united in groups, or clans, and 
these were grouped again into the five kingdoms of Ulster, 
Munster, Leinster, Connaught and Meath, all owning a 
sentimental allegiance to the King of all Ireland, whose seat 
was at the famed hill of Tara and whose sovereignty 
eventually settled in the powerful family of the O'Neills. 
The art and the system of laws of this period show a high 
state of development, but it is the literature which stPl 
remains the wonder and admiration of scholars. Of she 
manuscripts that have survived, L. Paul-Dubois, a French 
authority, says: ' - 

"They comprise prose and verse, stories and poems, 
history and fiction. In them are found mingled primitive 
rudeness and exquisite delicacy, an oriental imaginativeness 
and a strong common sense. Exhibiting, as they do, a com- 
bination of freshness of feeling, delicacy of sentiment and 
at the same time perfect naturalness, these remains have 
proved a literary inspiration to the greatest modern poets, 
to Tennyson and Swinburne, for instance, in our own time. 
It was from Ireland that Europe received her first love 
song. It was the Irish who invented rhyme, in all its 
varied forms, single or double, final, initial or medial, 
including the most elaborate assonances and alliterations. 
And it is remarkable that we never find in the bardic litera- 
ture that exuberance of diction and exaggeration of form 
that often grates upon us in the later epics. They show, on 
the contrary, as we are told by Dr. Sigerson, 'classic reserve 
in thought, form and expression.' It is no exaggeration to 
say, with this learned Irishman, that the literary scepter 
once wielded by Rome fell in later times to Celtic Ireland." 

But more important than the glory of ancient Irish 
literature was the fading of paganism before the light of 
Christianity. This transformation was brought about in the 
fifth century, chiefly through the ministrations of St. Pat- 
rick, "the Apostle of Ireland," and the religion took such a 



i 9 o THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

hold upon the minds and hearts of the people that Ireland 
became the center from which Christianity radiated 
throughout Europe. Not only did Irish missionaries travel 
far and wide throughout the continent, spreading the doc- 
trines of the Church, but the island became a Mecca for the 
students of many nations. Latin and Greek, science and 
theology, philosophy and literature were taught at scores of 
schools. To the institutions at Clonfert, Armagh, Lismore 
and elsewhere came thousands of young men from Gaul, 
from Italy and from the northern countries. Of the famed 
University of Clonmacnoise the ruins still stand. 

"From the fifth to the eighth century," says L. Paul- 
Dubois, "Ireland was the refuge and the home of modern 
culture, and may truly be said to have saved European civil- 
ization in the days of the barbarian incursions." 

Such was the glory of ancient Ireland, to be extin- 
guished by successive waves of plundering invasion. Those 
who are inclined to wonder at the desperate situation of 
Ireland before the late nineteenth century era of reform 
should remember that that condition was the result of seven 
hundred years of spoliation. Much in the way of destruc- 
tion can be accomplished in seven centuries, and the marvel 
is that the race survived at all. 

The "Golden Age," as it has been called, when Ireland 
was the guardian of western learning and the Christian 
religion, lasted from the fifth to early in the ninth century. 
Then the first blow fell. By rapid and ruthless invasions 
the Northmen overran the island, founding towns on the 
seaboard, from which they penetrated to the interior. They 
destroyed every institution of learning they found. Schools 
and libraries, with their priceless manuscripts, were burned 
and Irish civilization all but extinguished. After less than 
two hundred years, however, the resilience of the race 
asserted itself. The Danes, defeated more than once, were 
decisively routed in 1014 by Brian Boru, and the restoration 
of Irish power was marked by a remarkable renaissance 
of Irish literature and art and religion. Manuscripts multi- 
plied, schools and churches were rebuilt and Irish mission- 
aries once more penetrated barbarian Europe. Everything 
promised a permanent revival of civilization in the island, 



THE CONQUESTS 191 

and had the country been permitted to work out its own 
destinies a strong nation would have been established. But 
fate gave her no time. The English invasions began, and 
Ireland was doomed to seven hundred years of unrest, 
oppression and persecution. 

The first "civilizing" expedition from across the Irish 
Sea was that of Richard, Earl of Pembroke, better known as 
"Strongbow," who was invited over in 11 69 by Dermot 
MacMurrough, King of Leinster, as an ally against Rod- 
erick O'Connor, "High King" of Ireland. It is said that 
the invasion was sanctioned by Adrian IV, Nicholas Break- 
speare, the only Englishman who ever became Pope. At any 
rate, Henry II soon followed Strongbow, established him- 
self for a short time in Dublin and had himself recognized as 
Overlord of Ireland, asserting his claim under the papal bull. 

This was the entering wedge, to be driven home by 
three hundred and fifty years of invasion. Almost without 
interruption, during this long period, a stream of English 
colonists and adventurers poured into the country. Grad- 
ually they established a rude authority over a strip' of land 
on the east coast called the "English pale," which extended, 
at its greatest development, to not more than one-third of 
the area of the island. Outside of that territory the Eng- 
lish could do no more than foster dissensions among the 
Ir'^h clans, and so prevent a united attack. 

It should be observed that in no sense did the English 
conquer Ireland during these three hundred and fifty years. 
Indeed, the "pale" was in constant danger from Irish incur- 
sions, and outside of it English authority was unknown. 
Moreover, there was no permanency of settlement even 
within the "pale." Most of the colonists and adventurers 
to whom grants of Irish land had been made exploited the 
country as far as they were able and then returned to Eng- 
land, to be replaced by others. And those who remained 
became, in two or three generations, quite assimilated with 
the natives. They adopted Irish customs and Irish dress, 
took Irish wives and spoke the Irish language. So danger- 
ous was this fusion of the races to English ascendency that 
in 1367 a statute was issued punishing the acts specified by 
death or imprisonment. To widen the chasm between the 



192 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

two peoples the Irish were actually outlawed; except as a 
special favor, they could not claim the benefits of feudalism, 
while they felt all of its rigors. Yet even this savage legis- 
lation did not completely check the assimilation of the races. 
Moreover, there grew up an intermediate people, called the 
"Anglo-Irish," who, the loyalists complained, were more 
Irish than the Irish themselves. These attached themselves 
to powerful Anglo-Norman families, such as the Fitzger- 
alds, the Butlers, the Desmonds and the Burkes (de 
Burgh), which, in time, usurped the power of the Crown 
within the "pale" and made alliances at will with the great 
Gaelic chieftains. Thus by the end of the fifteenth century 
the "pale" had shrunk to a narrow strip of country around 
Dublin, threatened constantly by the proud and turbulent 
lords of the Anglo-Irish, while all the rest of Ireland had 
reverted to the old Gaelic clan system. After more than 
three hundred years the conquest had failed. 

But the next wave of invasion, to extend over a period 
of two hundred years, was to be more successful, as it was 
more ruthless, than the last. The Tudor sovereigns were 
merciless, but they were fairly thorough. Under Henry 
VII English armies penetrated even into Connaught. 
Henry VIII set himself resolutely to break the power of 
the Anglo-Irish nobles as he had broken the power of the 
English barons. Having accomplished this, he sought to 
establish peace in the distracted country by conciliating the 
Celtic aristocracy. He won over some of the great chief- 
tains, gave them lands taken from the monasteries and con- 
ferred upon them English titles — Earl of Tyrone, Earl of 
Tyrconnel, Earl of Dunraven and so on. Thus when in 
1542 he assumed the title of King of Ireland the country 
was relatively at peace, and remained so until his death. 
But this was not to last. Under Mary and Elizabeth and 
the Stuarts the policy of conciliation was abandoned and a 
policy of plunder and oppression substituted. It was 
decreed that by force of arms Celtic civilization should be 
wiped out, to be replaced by English civilization. Where 
Henry VIII had respected and protected native customs 
and laws it was ordered that English laws and English 
institutions should be made supreme. But the real core of 



THE CONQUESTS 193 

the policy was that the soil of Ireland should be confiscated 
and then "planted" with Englishmen. 

Under Queen Mary, King's and Queen's counties were 
established from confiscated territory and English settlers 
placed on the lands. Under Elizabeth, the Desmonds were 
maltreated into rebellion, then their lands, comprising about 
the whole province of Munster, were seized and distributed 
among English adventurers and speculators. When the 
Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell arose under James I a 
similar operation confiscated all of Ulster, and nearly 
30,000 of the King's Scotch subjects were "planted" where 
the Irish had been. A more characteristic act of James was 
his abolition of the Gaelic system of land tenure and the 
substitution of the English system ; this destroyed the efficacy 
of countless titles, and nearly half a million acres more were 
confiscated. Naturally, these vast depredations were not 
carried out without bloodshed. There were three great 
insurrections under Elizabeth alone, and each was put down 
with merciless severity. The policy was ingeniously devised 
to expedite the seizure of the coveted territories. The rebel- 
lions were deliberately provoked by treachery and oppression, 
then put down by wholesale massacre. 

"The suppression of the native race," says Lecky, "was 
carried out with a ferocity which surpassed that of Alva in 
the Netherlands, and has seldom been exceeded in the pages 
of history." 

The wars were wars of extermination, not conquest. 
The expeditions waged campaigns of systematic butchery, 
sparing neither men nor women nor children, while those 
who survived crept forth from their hiding places to find the 
country devastated and to starve amid the desolation. The 
annals of the time — English as well as Irish — sicken the 
reader with their records of savagery. An English official 
in 1582 wrote that within six months 30,000 persons had 
died of starvation in Munster, besides those who had been 
butchered by the soldiery. Even during periods of peace 
the English governors sedulously continued the work of 
extermination by laying waste all the country they could 
cover. In the last years of the sixteenth century one-half 
the population perished. Elizabeth's rule over Ireland was 
13 



194 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

complete. But, says a historian, "she reigned over corpses 
and ashes." 

Yet, incredible as it may seem, the ruthless work of 
"conquest" was revived and continued during almost the 
whole of the seventeenth century. New elements, however, 
entered into the English policy. To the lust for land were 
added political revenge and religious persecution. In both 
the Stuart revolutions — that which cost Charles I his head 
and that which cost James II his throne — the Irish took the 
losing side, and suffered the vengeance of the victorious party 
for their mistaken loyalty to the condemned house. Like- 
wise, for rejecting the reformation and clinging to Roman 
Catholicism, the Irish called down upon themselves the 
rigors of persecution. Built upon the successive "planta- 
tions" and enriched with the confiscated property of monas- 
teries, the Anglican Church conducted a campaign against 
the obdurate natives. To this were added the forcible settle*- 
ment of Ulster with Scotchmen and the spoliation of native 
landholders under the cloak of legal enactments. In effect, 
to be Irish was to be exposed to every form of oppression. 
The hatred and despair engendered by these things burst at 
last into the Catholic rebellion of 1641. 

The Protestant settlers of Ulster suffered first, some 
thousands of them being slain. Soon the insurgents were 
supreme throughout Catholic Ireland, established their own 
Parliament and entered into a compact with the doomed 
King, Charles I. This was fatal, though doubtless they 
would have felt the iron hand of Cromwell in any event. 
When he had crushed the royalists in England the Protector 
turned deliberately upon Ireland. There is no redder page 
in history than that which records this invasion of Ireland. 
Cromwell landed in the country in 1649 and marched upon 
the rebels, and at every stamp of his foot the land gushed 
blood. The garrison of Drogheda was massacred, 30,000 
men. Wexford was taken and the defenders put to the 
sword. Wherever a rebel was captured he was shot or 
hanged. Merciless measures followed the "pacification" 
of the country. Shiploads of Irish, including women and 
children, were sent as slaves to the West Indies. Thousands 
of men were driven as exiles to France and Spain. Crom- 



THE CONQUESTS 195 

well's policy of exterminating the Irish and substituting an 
English population was as nearly successful as such an enter- 
prise could be. The provinces of Ulster, Munster and 
Leinster were confiscated and the land divided among the 
Roundhead soldiers and the speculators who had advanced 
to Parliament the funds for the "conquest." Connaught 
alone, as the least fertile of the provinces, was reserved for 
the Irish owners of the country. There they might settle, 
and nowhere else. Death was decreed against any Irishman 
found east of the Shannon river. — • 

"The Irish shall go to hell or Connaught !" was Crom- 
well's phrase. 

It was Cromwell, then, who made modern Ireland, 
with all its afflicting evils. Yet he did not quite carry out 
his pitiless program. The Irish continued to exist in Con- 
naught, and also in the other provinces, because the English 
colonists wanted to use them as laborers. The "extermina- 
tion" was so incomplete, to use a contradictory phrase, that 
in less than fifty years the Irish were able to rebel again. 
Lured by the promises of the hunted James II that the 
rights of Catholics would be restored by him, they rose 
against the English. They assembled their own Parliament, 
and, remembering past wrongs, sought revenge by dealing 
to Protestants discriminatory laws such as they themselves 
had suffered under. The Battle of the Boyne ended their 
hopes, and a million acres more were confiscated by William 
III and "planted" with men of the dominant minority. 
This was the last of the great "plantations," one reason 
being that the work was virtually completed, and the Irish 
landowner was eradicated in favor of the English adven- 
turer and speculator. The reader will begin to understand 
now the origin of that interminable "land problem" which 
the laborious legislation of the last forty years has 
attempted to solve. 

But what was the final situation left by these centuries 
of attempted conquest, during which wars, "plantations," 
rebellions and massacres followed one another in ghastly 
monotony? What was the result of the successive "con- 
quests" by Norman, Plantagenet, Tudor, Stuart, Round- 
head and Orange invasion? 



196 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

It is true that the Irish people were crushed into sub- 
mission, but the "conquest," instead of welding a strong, 
united nation, simply intensified the division between the 
races and piled up the gigantic debt which the British 
Empire is now paying. The cleavage between the two 
peoples, which had been merely racial, was widened by 
social, religious and political prejudices. On the one side 
were the English and Scotch Protestants, directly or by 
inheritance the beneficiaries of the invasions and "planta- 
tions." These held the land, the wealth and the political 
power of the country. The government was theirs, the laws 
were theirs, the courts were theirs, all offices and preferment 
were theirs. Even the church of the majority of them (the 
Anglican) was a state church, endowed with confiscated 
Irish lands and supported by public taxes. 

On the other side were all the rest of the people, a vast 
majority, professing the condemned Catholic faith. Irish, 
Anglo-Irish and English, they had neither land, nor wealth, 
nor political power, nor fair standing before the law; they 
were united by a common misery and a common hatred of 
England. In studying the present Home Rule demand, 
then, we turn from 1909 back to 1689. The two succeed- 
ing centuries must also be examined. 



XXIII 
PENAL LAWS 

The invasions, "plantations" and massacres of the pre- 
ceding three hundred years had been so effective that the 
beginning of the eighteenth century found Ireland quite 
crushed. The land, wealth and political power of the coun- 
try were in the hands of the English and Protestant minor- 
ity; the Irish majority were sullen, but helpless and hope- 
less, submissive to the government inflicted upon them 
because resistance meant more massacres and wider starva- 
tion. But while the "conquest" was in this sense complete, 
the English "garrison" was not satisfied. It deemed it 
necessary to protect the future, to make impossible the 
restoration of the stolen land and stolen rights to the Irish. 
Though landless and powerless, they were still a menace by 
their very numbers and by the spirit of unity resulting from 
their common misery and religion. They must be outlawed 
for all time. Having been robbed by every kind of violence, 
it remained only to give the robbery a form of legal sanction. 

The obvious resort was religious persecution, not by 
the coarse methods of the rack and the stake, for these had 
simply stimulated faith, whether used against Catholics or 
Protestants, but by the more deadly methods of legislation*. 
To the era of land confiscation, then, succeeded the era of 
penal laws. This form of oppression is the distinguishing 
infamy of the misgovernment of Ireland during the eight- 
eenth century. Some historians believe that it would have 
been possible to weld the two peoples at the beginning of 
that century into a strong, united nation. As we have seen, 
they were widely apart in social, political and religious sym- 
pathies, but under a decent and equitable system of govern- 
ment the Irish would gradually have assimilated the minor- 
ity, as they had assimilated many of the early "planters" 
and many of the invading soldiery. England and the "gar- 

197 



198 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

risen," however, set themselves deliberately to widen the 
breach instead of closing it, and thus perpetuated the enmi- 
ties and the wrongs which have existed to this day. The 
Irish suffered also from the inherent weakness of the system 
above them. They were ruled by the English "garrison," 
but the "garrison" was in turn subject to the schemes and 
whims of the government in London. Thus all sense of 
responsibility was submerged in selfish interests. England 
worked to wring all she could from both the peoples in Ire- 
land, indifferent to the rights of either, while the "garrison" 
exploited to the utmost the helpless majority. The Irish 
had to bear the double burden. 

As to the penal laws, the chosen weapons of spoliation 
during the eighteenth century, it is hard for Americans to 
realize that only two hundred years ago such monstrous 
perversions were cloaked with the dignity and force of legal 
enactment. They were deliberately designed to exclude the 
majority of the Irish people not only from political power, 
but from free ownership of property, from the benefits of 
education and the consolations of their religion. 

"It would not be difficult," writes Goldwin Smith, the 
venerable Canadian philosopher and historian, "to point to 
persecuting laws more sanguinary than these. But it would 
be difficult to point to any more insulting to the best feelings 
of man or more degrading to religion." 

A brief but effective summary of the penal laws is given 
by L. Paul-Dubois. 

"Violence," he says, "was united to hypocrisy, perfidy 
to corruption, and the highest honors and rewards were 
reserved for the apostate and informer." The scope of the 
statutes — which were passed between 1695 and 1709 — he 
defines thus : 

"Catholic worship was tolerated, but only on sufferance. All 
public ceremonies and all pilgrimages were prohibited; even bells 
and crosses were interdicted. The ordination of any new clergy- 
men was forbidden by law; decree of banishment was passed against 
all bishops and members of religious orders, and death was to be 
their punishment in case they returned to Ireland. Secular priests 
could not exercise their office, under pain of deportation, until they 
had registered themselves and taken not merely an oath of alle- 
giance, but an oath of abjuration, which their Church forbade them 
to take. Every Papist was ordered, under pain of fine, to inform 



PENAL LAWS 199 

against his clergyman. On the other hand, a public pension was 
assigned by the state to every priest who should turn Protestant. 
As for the Catholic laity, they were deprived of all political rights 
whatever. They were forbidden to act as teachers, under pain of 
banishment. They were forbidden to have their children educated, 
except by Protestants, or to have them educated abroad. They were 
debarred from obtaining any public employment or practicing any 
liberal profession except that of medicine. 

''They could not hold property in land or take land on lease 
for a longer term than thirty years, and then only on the harshest 
conditions. If they engaged in trade or industry, they had to pay 
a special tax, and could not employ more than two apprentices. 
They were forbidden to carry arms or to own a horse of greater 
value than £5. They could not act as guardians of their own chil- 
dren, nor marry a Protestant wife, nor inherit an estate from a 
Protestant relative. Moreover, the property of a Catholic was 
equally divided among his children on his death, the law of primo- 
geniture being confined to Protestants. The object of this last 
provision was, of course, to secure that if a Catholic chanced to 
make a fortune it should soon be dissipated. While Catholics were 
forbidden to engage in educational pursuits, the country was 
studded over with Protestant schools, where the children of Papists 
could receive free tuition. It was not merely the persecution of a 
religion, it was an attempt to degrade and demoralize a whole 
nation. It was sought at any cost to keep Papists in misery, igno- 
rance an*d slavery, and this with no other purpose save to assure 
the Protestant ascendency. The 'planters' who had come to Ireland 
in the time of Cromwell or William III knew how precarious was 
their title to the land, and they thus sought to adopt means that 
could not fail to assure their position." 

If these persecutions, which even Englishmen must 
abhor, had been due to an outburst of religious fanaticism 
merely, they would have no extended place in these letters, 
which aim to treat only of the economic and political status 
of Ireland. But it is quite clear that the infamous penal 
laws were inspired not by zealotry, but by greed. 

"Pure religious fanaticism," wrote Lecky, "does not 
indeed appear ever to have played a dominant part in this 
legislation. The object of the penal laws, even in the worst 
period, was much less to produce a change of religion than 
to secure property and power by reducing to complete impo- 
tence those who had formerly possessed them." 

Thus we find that the penal laws had a deadly effect in 
stripping the Irish people of their political rights and their 
land, and the results are manifest to-day in the evils of mis- 
government and of the land system which is now disappear- 
ing. After fifty years of enforcement the severity of the 



2oo THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

statutes was allowed to relax, as they had accomplished the 
designed purpose. Very few of the Irish had been driven 
or tempted to profess religions "conversion," and their chil- 
dren continued to be educated in "hedge schools," the main- 
tenance of which Lecky regards as "one of the most honor- 
able features in their history." But the persecution started 
a stream of emigration of the best elements among the 
people, a drain which was never to cease, and, on the other 
hand, it transformed those who remained into a race of 
slaves. Those who tied to the Continent filled the pages of 
war history with the records of Irish valor, and took revenge 
upon England at Fontenoy and Dettingen; those left 
behind, robbed of every right of freemen and worn out 
from massacre and oppression, sank into sullen serfdom. 
Nationality was extinguished. The people were inert, hope- 
less, exhausted. Poverty spread among them like a plague, 
and there was no strength to resist it. At intervals of a few 
years came famines, that of 1741 being so desperate that 
one-third of the poor of Munster died of hunger and fever. 
As the black years rolled on the very despair of the people 
bred lawlessness and violence ; there were bloody risings 
against the extortion oi the landlords and the extortion of 
the state church in the form of tithes. Of course, these 
agrarian rebellions met punishment swift and terrible — 
imprisonment, hanging and transportation by wholesale. 
So the weary tale went on. 

It could not last. The very barbarity of the system 
reacted upon those who inflicted it. The minority which 
held the power became infected with the weaknesses of 
despotism. Luxury bred extravagance and extravagance 
bred corruption. Moreover, the tyranny which this class 
practiced against the Irish majority invited tyranny upon 
itself. England treated the ruling minority in Ireland with 
the harshness and contempt it had earned, though she did 
so for selfish reasons and with no thought of revenging the 
victims of the system. The Irish Parliament — a wholly 
Protestant body, Catholics being ineligible for membership, 
and even to vote at the elections — was stripped of all real 
authority, all its acts being subject to approval in London. 
Furthermore, England deliberately strangled Irish industry 




ONE OF THE NEW HOUSES. 




IMPROVEMENTS BY TENANT PURCHASER. 



PENAL LAWS 201 

and trade, those who suffered directly being chiefly Prot- 
estants, since the penal laws had made it virtually impos- 
sible for Catholics to engage profitably in commerce. The 
effect was felt most severely in Ulster, whence 200,000 
Presbyterians emigrated in fifty years, most of them settling 
in America, where they added vigor to the revolutionary 
spirit that freed the colonies. 

England had gone too far. She was destined to see 
Protestants and Catholics united against her, and Irish inde- 
pendence proclaimed throughout the land, and this before 
the end of the century in which the most sweeping persecu- 
tion had all but stamped out Irish nationality. Not all of 
the Protestant minority accepted tamely the oppression from 
London. In the course of years there arose in the colony a 
third party, whose main principle was that the welfare of 
Ireland as a whole should be held superior to any other con- 
sideration, especially to the interests of England. The 
greatest of these "Irish Whigs" were Edmund Burke and 
Henry Grattan, and one saying of the latter, a Protestant, 
illustrates an important phase of the new party's policy. 

"The Irish Protestant never can be free," said this 
Protestant leader, "while the Irish Catholic is a slave." 

Deep-rooted as was the minority's hatred and fear of 
the majority, these men and their followers were big enough 
to despise and oppose it. For the theory that the great mass 
of the citizens must be ground down and oppressed for the 
benefit of the few, they substituted the idea of Irish nation- 
ality. It took root and grew, and religious differences no 
longer operated to prevent Ireland's presenting a united 
front to England. There were heard demands for justice, 
for liberation from the intolerable burden of misrule by a 
selfish minority in Ireland and an indifferent government in 
England. Perhaps the movement would have succeeded in 
any event, but that which turned the scale was the American 
Revolution. The militia of 40,000 raised by Ireland for 
defense in 1776 gave a hint of the country's power. Its 
demands became more imperative, and England, sobered by 
the loss of her greatest colony, was forced to yield. With 
great strides Ireland advanced toward the goal of a national 
existence. 



202 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

In 1778 Catholics regained some of their lost rights. 
They could once more own land and inherit under the com- 
mon law. Within a year the shackles which England had 
fastened upon Irish industry and commerce were struck, off. 
In 1782, under the leadership of Grattan, the Irish Parlia- 
ment asserted and compelled recognition of its independ- 
ence. Ireland was now an independent nation, bound to 
England only by the tie of the Crown. In 1782, also, the 
religion and education of Catholics were freed from some 
of the burdens of the penal laws. Ten years later Catholics 
were made eligible for admission to the bar and for jury 
service, and in 1793 they won the right to vote at parlia- 
mentary elections. 

The pioneers in the fight for Irish rights were justified 
in their declaration that self-government would bring pros- 
perity. The country fairly glowed with new life. Agri- 
culture revived, industries were established, the stagnant chan- 
nels of trade and commerce became once more animated. 
Religious and political animosities began to fade before the 
growing light of economic prosperity. It seemed as if the 
tale of Ireland's misery had ended. But it was simply the 
closing of a chapter. 



XXIV 
SOLD OUT 

With a Parliament of her own, a lifting of the cloud 
of religious persecution and a revival of industry, Ireland 
faced toward the end of the eighteenth century an era of 
peace and prosperity. But a fatal weakness remained in the 
system. It was destined to undermine the whole structure 
and bring with the close of the century such a reverse to 
Irish progress as would darken the succeeding hundred 
years with records of injustice and suffering. While the 
Parliament in Dublin was freed from English dictation, it 
was not a truly Irish Parliament. Its independence was won 
by Grattan in 1782, but it was not until 1793 that Catho- 
lics gained the right to vote. Meanwhile the Parliament 
^jemained wholly Protestant — Presbyterians as well as Cath- 
olics were excluded — and almost wholly devoted to the 
interests of the landlords and their oligarchy. 

The Opposition, led by Grattan, fought gallantly, but 
could not overcome the arbitrary power of the government 
forces, founded upon representation from "rotten bor- 
oughs" and the most flagrant corruption. Electoral reform 
became a burning issue, supported strongly by the Volun- 
teers, Protestants for the most part, but the demand was 
treated with contempt. Gradually the tyranny and venality 
of the parliamentary majority drew patriots of both races 
together in a campaign to break the vicious system. 

Out of the turmoil arose the inevitable leader, Theo- 
bald Wolfe Tone. He was a Protestant, but a man of just 
and liberal ideas, which under the inspiration of the French 
revolution became radical. Under him the Volunteers 
became the United Irishmen; Presbyterians, Catholics and 
all men of liberal ideas joining with them. The jobbery 
and corruption of the government were hotly denounced; 

203 



204 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

Belfast, the center of militant Protestantism, began a move- 
ment to found an Irish republic. But as the maddened 
people of France plunged into excesses, and the Irish radi- 
cals applauded them, there was a reaction among the middle- 
class Protestant Liberals and some of the Catholic clergy, 
and as a result the movement shrank until it included only- 
advanced revolutionaries. The government in 1793 was able 
to disband the Volunteers. Wolfe Tone and Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald went to France and raised an expedition 
under Hoche, who failed in an attempt to land in Bantry 
Bay. Under a policy of conciliation the unrest subsided 
further, and in 1796 the government felt strong enough to 
assume the offensive. Once more the disreputable weapons 
of religious persecution were seized upon. The govern- 
ment deliberately fomented a religious war, and the new- 
born spirit of nationality expired amid the rancorous strife 
of sectarianism. Irishmen forgot that they were Irishmen, 
and remembered only that they were divided in religion. 
Having relighted the torch of intolerance, it was not diffi- 
cult for the government to start a conflagration. By a 
policy of provocation it stung the protesting peasantry into 
open revolt. This is not a charge of partisanship, but the 
established conviction of unbiased historians. Of the 
famous rising in 1798 Goldwin Smith says: 

"Upon the homes of the peasantry were let loose the 
license and barbarity of an irregular soldiery more cruel than 
a regular invader. Flogging, half-hanging, pitch-capping, 
picketing went on over a large district, and the most barbar- 
ous scourgings without trial were inflicted in Dublin, in the 
very seat of government and justice. It appears not unlikely 
that the peasantry might have been kept quiet by measures of 
lenity and firmness and that they were gratuitously scourged 
and tortured into open rebellion." 

The putting down of the insurrection was little more 
than a matter of slaughter, though the rebels fought with 
desperation and won some victories. Wolfe Tone and Lord 
Fitzgerald died in prison. Then followed a literal "reign of 
terror," when the hapless insurrectionists were subjected to 
the most merciless punishment. Lord Cornwallis, appointed 
viceroy against his will, was the most loyal of Englishmen, 



SOLD OUT 205 

but his heart revolted against the systematic barbarity which 
was everywhere inflicted upon the Irish people. He wrote: 

"The principal persons of this country and the members 
of both houses of Parliament are averse to all acts of clem- 
ency, and would pursue measures that could only terminate in 
the extermination of the greater number of the inhabitants 
and in the utter destruction of the country. * * * Our 
war is reduced to a predatory system in the mountains of 
Wicklow and the bogs of Kildare. * * * I am very 
much afraid that any man with a brown coat who is found 
within several miles of a field of action is butchered without 
discrimination. * * * There is no law, either in town 
or country, but martial law. * * * Numberless mur- 
ders are hourly committed by our people without any process 
of examination whatever." 

Thus the despairing revolt of '98 was crushed. Brute 
force had once more put down the effort of the people to win 
justice from the government. But this was not all. Eng- 
land had still to revenge herself for the humiliation of grant- 
ing legislative independence in 1782. The manufactured 
rebellion and the excesses which followed furnished the 
excuse, and it was decreed that the Irish Parliament should be 
wiped out, merged with the Parliament at Westminster. 
True, the Irish Parliament was virtually the property of the 
landlord minority; with some honorable exceptions, the mem- 
bers were leaders or beneficiaries of the intolerable system of 
minority rule, yet at least it had the form of an honestly rep- 
resentative legislature, and in time might have been regener- 
ated by public opinion. But it was doomed to extinction. 

This chapter in the history of English rule in Ireland 
lacks the bloody stains of those which preceded it, but, if it is 
possible, is more disgraceful. Pitt might have accomplished 
the Union by force, but he chose instead to encompass it by 
corruption, and make Ireland pay the cost of her own betrayal. 
In its first attempt, in the session of January, 1799, the gov- 
ernment met defeat, the opposition being made up of patriots 
and of the selfish owners of "rotten boroughs," who, under 
the plan of the Union, would lose many of the parliamentary 
seats which they "owned." This gave the government an 
opportunity to split the opponents of the measure. It set out 



206 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

deliberately to buy the "owners" of the eighty-five boroughs 
which the change would extinguish. All through the year 
1799 emissaries of the government were busy upon their 
unholy mission. No less than $6,300,000 was expended in 
buying the borough seats. Nor was this all ; patents of nobil- 
ity ( \) were scattered lavishly as bribes. Among the betray- 
ers of Ireland the government distributed twenty-two Irish 
peerages, six English peerages and twenty-two promotions in 
the Irish peerage, as rewards for the sale of Ireland's rights. 
The Irish Parliament met for the last time on January 
15, 1800. The opponents of the Union — Protestants and 
Catholics — presented petitions against the plan from twenty- 
six of the thirty-two counties. A fiery debate began. In the 
midst of it came a dramatic interruption. Grattan, weak 
and ill, walked slowly into the House, supported by two 
friends. Retiring, sick at heart, from the useless struggle 
against corruption in 1797, the leader had come back at the 
call of his country. His presence and his eloquence inspired 
the Opposition, but nothing could overcome the effect of the 
debauchery of the members. On an amendment to the 
address, indorsing the independence settled in 1782, the vote 
was 96 to 138, a government majority of 42. A month later, 
Corry. Chancellor of the Exchequer, moved the resolutions 
adopted in the British Parliament, embodying the articles of 
Union. He took occasion to make a base attack on Grattan. 
Ill as he was, the leader retorted in a fiery speech, branding 
Corry as a coward and villain. They met at dawn in the 
Phoenix Park, and Grattan had the satisfaction of putting a 
bullet in the slanderer's arm. But the beginning of the end 
had come. The various resolutions leading to the Union 
were jammed through, and the final bill was passed on May 
26, by a vote of 153 to> 88. This is the comment of Charles 
George Walpole, historian : 

"Thus ended the Parliament of the English colony in Ire- 
land. It was never in any sense representative of the nation. 
It was the corrupt embodiment of a dominant race. It sold 
the birthright cf the nation for its own selfish ends. There 
had not even been a dissolution to test the opinion of the con- 
stituencies, the proposal to consult the people upon a question 
so vita* to their interests having been sternly condemned by 



SOLD OUT 207 

Pitt. The most remarkable and creditable thing about the 
whole transaction was that so many members of the lower 
house were found whose integrity the government was unable 
to corrupt and whose honor it was powerless to purchase." 

By a supreme stroke of irony, the cost of the country's 
betrayal, more than $7,500,000, was charged to the national 
debt of Ireland, and made a permanent burden upon the Irish 
people. The record of infamy was complete. The world 
has accepted the deliberate judgment of Gladstone. 

"There is no blacker or fouler transaction in the history 
of man," he declared, "than the making of the Union be- 
tween Great Britain and Ireland." 

Thus, after seven hundred years of spoliation by violence 
and penal enactments, England had completed the subjection 
of Ireland by robbing her of her shadow of a Parliament 
under a cloak of "constitutional" methods. For better or 
worse, the kingdoms were united. It was to be no longer 
possible to blame Irish wrongs upon the "garrison." Eng- 
land assumed the responsibility herself. During the nine- 
teenth century she was to open a new account with Ireland. 
The world, better informed and more watchful than in those 
other days, has been able to examine the account. It is, truly, 
a record far more honorable than that of the preceding cen- 
turies. Many evils have been swept away, many wrongs 
righted. But the fact remains that England is still vastly in 
Ireland's debt. 



XXV 

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 

In this rapid review of the history of Ireland, with its 
bearing upon the present-day demand for Home Rule, we 
come now to a survey of the nineteenth century. The record 
is totally different from that of the preceding centuries. The 
old order changes, and changes, in a great degree, for the bet- 
ter. Hoary abuses are done away with, mighty reforms are 
inaugurated; the new system of government, under the Act of 
Union, has a trial of ioo years, and in the closing of the cen- 
tury an economic regeneration of the country is under way. 
Yet, if confiscation, massacre and persecution have been aban- 
doned, condemned by the spirit of the age; if intolerance has 
disappeared before the spread of enlightenment, and if "a 
government of landlordism, tempered by assassination," has 
been swept away, there still remain intolerable evils, and the 
people of Ireland still persist in demanding a revolution in 
their public affairs. 

The making of the Union in 1800, which Gladstone 
termed the blackest and foulest transaction in the history of 
man, simply perpetuated the systematic misrule under which 
Ireland had labored. The Irish Parliament of 1 782-1 800 
was, in truth, not a representative body, but it might have 
been the basis of a really free legislature. With the Union, 
control of Irish affairs was transferred to Westminster, Ire- 
land to' have one hundred members of the House of Com- 
mons and about thirty members of the House of Lords, elected 
by the Irish peers. The worst feature was that Ireland was 
to be ruled henceforth by Englishmen, who had no knowl- 
edge of the country's needs and no sympathy with the people 
or their institutions. 

Throughout the century, moreover, English policy 
toward Ireland was marked by the most fatal vacillation. 
Egotism and indifference combined to .reject all representa- 

208 




&4 

3 

K 
«! 

a 

o 
a 

o 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 209 

tions of the people and to exasperate their spirit. When con- 
cessions were made, they were made in a manner to wound 
rather than to heal. Events moved always in the same 
course. The demands were met at first by contempt and 
mockery; when this became unbearable the Irish retorted with 
outbursts of lawlessness; the government's invariable remedy 
was coercion, the infliction of a sort of martial law, which 
superseded the orderly processes of justice and placed the peo- 
ple at the mercy of political magistrates ; then violence as in- 
variably increased, until finally, through sheer terror of a gen- 
eral uprising, the government yielded and hastened to grant 
what had been demanded. Again and again during the nine- 
teenth century was this discreditable procedure followed. 
Englishmen of brains recognized the folly of the govern- 
ment's course, which led it to grant concessions, not in a spirit 
of justice, but because of dread of revolution, thus stirring 
the hatred of the people and putting a premium upon dis- 
order. 

"Your oppressions," said Lord John Russell to< his coun- 
trymen, "have taught the Irish to hate, your concessions to 
brave you. You have exhibited to them how scanty was the 
stream of your bounty, how full the tribute of your fear." 

The Land League campaign of 1879 was a defiant revolt 
against law and order, yet it won a signal reform. 

"A more lawless, a more violent organization has 
scarcely ever existed in any country," declares R. Barry 
O'Brien, an Irish writer. "If it had not been violent and 
lawless it would not have succeeded. * * * In 188 1 
the government surrendered at discretion, and another Land 
Act was carried amid scenes of lawlessness, violence, anarchy, 
outrage, panic and alarm scarcely paralleled even in the 
troubled history of Ireland." 

If English testimony on this point is wanted, it is at 
hand. 

"Fixity of land tenure," said Lord Derby, "has been the 
direct result of two causes — Irish outrage and parliamentary 
obstruction. The Irish know it as well as we. Not all the 
influence and eloquence of Mr. Gladstone would have pre- 
vailed on the English House of Commons to do what has 
been done in the matter of Irish tenant right if the answer to 
14 



210 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

all objections had not been ready: 'How else are we to govern 
Ireland?'" 

"I must make one admission," said Mr. Gladstone him- 
self, "and that is that without the Land League the Act of 
1 88 1 would not at this moment be on the statute book." 

Furthermore, the reforms granted by the British Parlia- 
ment were never whole-hearted measures. As they were 
granted under compulsion, so they were restricted as far as 
the government dared. If ever a country needed drastic 
remedies, it was Ireland. Yet the authorities temporized, 
vacillated and made blundering half-concessions that never 
fully remedied the evils at which they were aimed. 

The century opened ominously. The people watched in 
sullen anger the extinction of their liberties by the Act of 
Union. In 1 803 Robert Emmet, the bravest and most pic- 
turesque of Ireland's heroes, led a despairing revolt which 
failed, and died on the scaffold with such supreme courage 
that his name has ever been dearest to his race. But the 
story of this rising belongs really to the eighteenth century; 
"it was the last flicker of the fire of 1798," says O'Brien. 
Let us examine briefly the condition of the country after the 
Union. The population was about 5,000,000; four-fifths of 
these were Catholics, 600,000 Episcopalians, 400,000 of 
other churches, chiefly Presbyterians. All of the political 
power was in the hands of the 600,000 Episcopalians ; they 
gave no consideration to the Presbyterians, and Catholics, in 
spite of the abolition of many penal enactments against them, 
held no positions of trust in public affairs. Four-fifths of the 
people of Ireland "had no more to do with the government 
of the country," it has been said, "than a community of 
mice might have to do with a government of cats." The 
government's attitude upon religion was the same. The 
Anglican Church was established and endowed — a state 
church, supported by public tithes. The Presbyterian and 
Catholic Churches were tolerated, but were supported by the 
voluntary contributions of members, who had also to pay 
tithes to the Episcopalian Church. Education was similarly 
burdened with injustice, as has been related in another 
chapter. 

In all these evils may be traced the effects of the funda- 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 211 

mental weakness of the Union. It did not unite the races — 
it was not designed to do so — it simply united the govern- 
ment of Great Britain with a political party in Ireland. The 
minority remained in supreme control; but, having been 
relieved of responsibility, lost whatever sense of patriotism it 
might have had. Nor did the home government keep the 
pledges upon which it had forced the union. Complete 
emancipation of the Catholics was solemnly promised, but 
twenty-nine years elapsed before the pledge was redeemed, 
and then only under the pressure of a national agitation. Back 
of this was the great figure of Daniel O'Connell, whose name 
is indelibly written on the history of emancipation. In 1823 
he reorganized the old Catholic Association, which had lost 
power because of division among its members. It spread 
throughout the whole country, enlisting the support of peas- 
ants, gentry and priests, and for five years maintained a cease- 
less agitation for equal rights. Finally, in 1828, O'Connell 
had himself elected member of Parliament from Clare, 
although as a Catholic he was ineligible to take his seat. In 
the following year, finding public opinion dangerous, the gov- 
ernment yielded, but on terms which seriously restricted the 
franchise, cutting the Irish electorate from 260,000 votes to 
26,000. 

Encouraged by this success, O'Connell began his famous 
agitation for the repeal of the Union. In his fight for Catho- 
lic emancipation he had had the support of Protestant Lib- 
erals, but they deserted him on the repeal issue, and hence- 
forth Protestant Ireland was to be Unionist. For five years, 
from 1835 to J 840, O'Connell suspended agitation and tried 
to gain his end by alliance with the British ministry; failing 
to achieve any substantial reforms, he broke the compact and 
resumed the struggle for repeal. By 1 843 the country was 
aflame upon the issue. The movement culminated in a mon- 
ster meeting at the Hill of Tara, when 250,000 persons 
assembled. The gathering was proscribed by the authorities, 
and troops were hurried to the scene. It seemed as if the 
agitation were about to flare into rebellion. But O'Connell, 
ever an advocate of "constitutional methods," gave the order 
to disperse. From that day he lost much of his power over 
the people, and was openly repudiated by the followers of the 



212 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

"Young Ireland" movement. He died in Genoa in 1847, 
under a cloud of disapprobation from radical members of his 
race, but secure in his fame as the "Great Liberator." 

The "Young Ireland" movement was destined also to 
end in failure. It started well, under the leadership of such 
brilliant men as Thomas Davis, John Blake Dillon, Charles 
Gavan Duffy, John Mitchel and Smith O'Brien. Some of 
them were Protestants, and their agitation, unlike that ot 
O'Connell, was for Ireland as a whole, not merely for 
Catholic Ireland. But differences of opinion as to methods, 
intensified by the horrors of the famine years, led to a rup- 
ture. Davis, who was dead, and O'Brien, who was living, 
were for "moral force"; Mitchel — a Protestant, like Davis 
— and his associates were for "physical force." Mitchel's 
policy of violence roused the country, enlisting finally even 
Smith O'Brien and his friends. But the dissensions gave 
the government its opportunity, especially as many of the 
clergy strongly opposed the threatened rising. Mitchel was 
suddenly arrested and transported, and in a single conflict the 
rebellion of 1848 was crushed. The reaction from the 
policy of O'Connell had carried the country far, but it was 
impossible to transmute the aroused patriotism into success- 
ful military strategy. 

Meanwhile a disaster infinitely greater smote the people 
— the appalling famine of 1 847-1 849, with its ghastly record 
of starvation, eviction and emigration. The comparative tran- 
quillity of the country under the Irish Parliament and the rise 
in the price of farm products during the Napoleonic wars 
gave an impetus to Ireland which not only brought agricul- 
tural prosperity, but caused a rapid increase in the popula- 
tion. The population, which in 1788 was 4,040,000, had 
grown by 1805 to 5,395,456 and by 1821 to 6,801,827. In 
1 841 there were 8,175,124 inhabitants. Taking advantage 
of the demand for land, the landlords encouraged the sub- 
division of holdings, so as to increase the rents and the num- 
ber of votes they could control. Then came peace and a 
sudden fall in the price of agricultural products, and the land- 
lords decided that they could make more from grazing than 
from the rentals of tilled ground. A campaign of "clear- 
ances" began, and continued for years. Tenants were driven 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 213 

from their farms and the houses leveled, Parliament indus- 
triously passing laws to make evictions easy and cheap. As 
there were no industries to which the people could turn, they 
simply had to have land; hence competition drove rents to 
exorbitant prices. Only by the most supreme effort could the 
people keep themselves from starvation. The time was coming 
when they could not do even that. A single bad harvest 
meant hunger for hundreds of thousands. Three harvests in 
succession failed — in 1845, 1846 and 1847. In the last two 
years the potato crop perished entirely. Until 1849 famine 
reigned throughout the land. By tens and by hundreds of 
thousands the people perished of hunger and fever. The 
roadsides were dotted with corpses. The strong fled from 
the country in a never-ending stream; the weak dropped in 
their tracks and died. The number killed by hunger was 
estimated at 729,033. Between 1846 and 1851 1,240,737 
emigrants left the country. Between 1849 and 1852 
263,000 families were evicted. There is no need to prolong 
the ghastly tale, which is too familiar to every person 
acquainted with Irish history. At fearful cost it brought 
home to the world a realization that a nation was perishing. 
The famine was unnatural, needless. It was not due to want 
of food, for during the years 1846 and 1847 Ireland exported 
far more than enough to feed her people. The trouble was 
that the produce of the land was used up in paying rent to 
the landlords. 

The famine was another turning point in the history of 
Ireland. It started at full tide that wave of emigration 
which has never ceased, which has robbed the country of its 
most vigorous inhabitants and has made America a factor in 
the demand for Home Rule. 

The history of Ireland during the latter half of the 
nineteenth century shows a constant brightening. There were 
periods when the darkness of oppression and violent reprisal 
settled over the land, but not for long. By the force of 
awakened public opinion, by outbursts of opposition that were 
simply unarmed rebellions and by campaigns of obstruction 
and agitation in the British Parliament the interest of English 
statesmen of ability was at last awakened and the govern- 



2i 4 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

ment compelled to inaugurate sweeping changes. These fifty 
years were, on the whole, a period of great reforms. The 
greatest, wisest and most important of all was the gradual 
extinction of landlordism, now under way. In addition, 
there were the disestablishment of the state church of the 
minority ; several acts for the betterment of the condition of 
farmers, agricultural laborers and artisans; the granting of 
self-government in purely local affairs, and the founding of a 
national university. 

The great famine of 1 847-1 849 left the country almost 
desolate and the people utterly worn out. The horrors of 
starvation and wholesale eviction had swelled the tide of 
emigration, draining the nation of its very lifeblood. For 
fifteen years Ireland remained steeped in misery. Gavan 
Duffy in 1 85 1 sought to revive the national spirit through 
his Irish Tenant League, but the movement was betrayed by 
two of its members. Again, in 1858, a dangerous conspir- 
acy was fomented in County Cork by James Stephens, one of 
the leaders of the rising of 1 848. It was quickly suppressed, 
yet it served to uncover the perilous condition of the public 
mind. A far more serious attack was being prepared. 
While Stephens, with O'Donovan Rossa and others, formed 
the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Irishmen who had taken 
refuge in the United States organized Fenianism for an 
armed attack upon Great Britain. The movement was 
denounced by powerful members of the Catholic clergy and 
by the advocates of "constitutional methods," yet it made 
headway. An incident in 1861 showed the temper of the 
people. Cardinal Cullen refused to permit the body of one 
of the revolutionaries to be carried into a church, and it was 
followed to the grave by 50,000 men. Seizure of some of 
the Fenian leaders in 1865 did not quell the trouble. Stephens 
escaped. Scattered risings were suppressed, and a ship from 
America, with arms and men who had fought in the Civil 
War, was captured, but for three years the government was 
terrorized. There was a raid into Canada, Clerkenwell 
prison in London was dynamited, Chester Castle was 
attacked and an attempt made to rescue some prisoners in 
Manchester, resulting in the death of a policeman and the 
hanging of three Fenians. Futile as these outbreaks were in 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 215 

themselves, they had the effects noted in connection with simi- 
lar risings in preceding years ; they aroused the attention of 
England, and were followed by immediate reforms. They 
led to the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Ireland 
and the passage of the first great Land Act of 1870. That 
violence hastened these concessions we have the testimony of 
English statesmen. 

"It has only been since the termination of the American 
war and the appearance of Fenianism," said Gladstone, "that 
the mind of this country has been greatly turned to the con- 
sideration of Irish affairs." Again, in 1868, when the great 
leader was asked why he had not dealt with disestablishment 
in 1866, he answered: 

"For a perfectly plain and simple reason. In the first 
place, circumstances were not ripe then as they are now. 
Circumstances, I repeat, were not ripe, in so far as we did 
not know then so much as we know now with respect to the 
intensity of Fenianism." 

"The attention of this country and the conscience of 
England," said Lord Dufferin, "were much stimulated, if not 
altogether awakened, by the fact of Fenianism." 

"Few persons," wrote Lord Derby in 1881, "will now 
regret the disendowment of the Irish Church or the passing of 
the Land Act of 1870; but it is regrettable that, for the third 
time in less than a century, agitation, accompanied with vio- 
lence, should have been shown to be the most effective instru- 
ment for redressing whatever Irishmen may be pleased to 
consider their wrongs." 

It is worth while to note in passing what this church 
question was. The Anglican Church, with about 600,000 
adherents out of the total population of nearly 8,000,000 in 
1 840, was the state Church. It was endowed with lands and 
with money, and supported, besides, by tithes levied against all 
the people. Of course, the greatest part of the tithes were 
paid by Catholics, and the few hundred thousand Presbyter- 
ians also had to contribute. In many parishes the rector of 
the endowed church actually had to borrow two or three wor- 
shipers from a neighboring parish in order to hold an occa- 
sional service, and so comply with the law which gave him a 
large salary. The people in 1830, and for several years fol- 



216 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

lowing, made war upon the grotesque system. There were 
many scenes of riot and violence, and finally, in 1838, the 
government yielded and passed a tithe commutation act. 
This placed the burden of paying the tithes upon the land- 
lords. Of course, the remedy was useless, for the landlords 
simply added the tax to the rents, and the people paid as 
before. It was not until 1869 that the state Church was dis- 
established and disendowed. It was "bought out" by the 
government, and while it was left with great wealth, it was 
stripped of political power and its support by the adherents of 
other churches stopped. 

The Land Act of 1870, which first established the tenant's 
proprietary interest in improvements made by his own labor, 
has already been discussed at length. For generations 
the land question had been the subject of almost ceaseless 
agitation; as early as 1845 tne English Devon commission 
had condemned the evil system and pointed out the remedy; 
but, as always, Ireland had to wait for many weary years for 
her rights. Though the statute marked a great advance, it 
was, on the whole, a failure, for it did not give the tenants 
fixity of tenure. For nine years a ceaseless agitation by con- 
stitutional methods was maintained, looking to further legis- 
lation for the solving of the land problem. All was in vain. 
England felt quite satisfied that she had done all that was 
necessary. Bill after bill was introduced, only to meet igno- 
minious defeat. Meanwhile parallel movements — one for 
land reform, the other for Home Rule — were under way. 
In 1874 the Nationalists, under Isaac Butt, for the first time 
won a general election in Ireland, and four years later lined 
up under the powerful leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell. 
In 1879 Michael Davitt, perhaps the best beloved of the 
Irish leaders, induced Parnell to yoke the movements for land 
reform and Home Rule and to accept tacitly the aid of the 
revolutionary faction. The House of Lords in the following 
year rejected a bill favorable to the tenants. The country, 
already threatened with famine, was in the throes of an evic- 
tion campaign, and the desperate people, under guidance of 
the famous Land League, replied with boycotting, resistance 
to eviction and many forms of violence. It was in the midst of 
this anarchy that the government passed the Land Act of 



THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 217 

1 881, and with it a severe coercion act. Neither was immedi- 
ately effective; both the evictions and the agrarian outrages 
continued. The jails were filled with leaders of the move- 
ment and their followers. Parnell himself was incarcerated. 
Finally, in 1882, after two years of strife, Gladstone entered 
into negotiations with Parnell, still in prison, and coercion 
was abandoned. Unhappily, this great victory was all but an- 
nulled by the cowardly murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish 
and Under Secretary Burke, in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. 
Lord Cavendish, just appointed Chief Secretary, was regard- 
ed as the bearer of a message of conciliation to- Ireland. His 
assassination dealt a blow to "agitation by constitutional 
methods 1 ' from which it was slow to revive. 

Gladstone, nevertheless, continued his magnificent efforts 
to achieve justice for Ireland. In 1886 he introduced a bill 
for land purchase — which to-day is under way — and for 
Home Rule. It was summarily rejected by the House of 
Commons. Living always close to the danger line, the peo» 
ple were at the time suffering want, owing to a fall in the 
prices of agricultural commodities. Payment of the rents 
demanded became an utter impossibility. Parliament having 
thrown out a relief bill offered by Parnell, the leaders inaugu- 
rated the famous "plan of campaign." Under this scheme 
tenants formally requested an abatement in the rents com- 
mensurate with the prevailing depression; upon the land- 
lord's refusal, the tenants agreed to pay into a campaign fund 
the reduced rent offered, the money to be held for acceptance 
by the landlord, or, failing that, to be used as a war fund to 
resist eviction. The government made its inevitable reply — 
coercion — and for three years a fierce agrarian and political 
struggle raged in the land. Parnell meanwhile was made 
the victim of a villainous attack in England, the London 
Times accusing him of complicity in outrages, supporting the 
charges with documentary "evidence." Inquiry forced a con- 
fession from Richard Pigott, forger of the letters, and Par- 
nell became a popular hero. Entering into a closer alliance 
with Gladstone, the leader was engaged in helping to formu- 
late a Home Rule program, when the O'Shea divorce case 
suddenly involved him in political ruin, split the Irish people 
into warring camps and started dissensions which raged for 



218 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

nearly ten years. Gladstone in 1893 carried a Home Rule 
bill through the House of Commons, but it was killed in the 
House of Lords. Meanwhile additional land acts, each 
advancing the emancipation of the tenants, had been passed. 
The terms of them all have been reviewed elsewhere, with 
the Act of 1903. 

This, then, is the story of the nineteenth century in 
Ireland. Lacking the sanguinary horrors of the centuries 
preceding, it is still a story of gloom and failure. Those 
who forced through the Union of 1 800 by the most despic- 
able corruption affected to believe that it would solve the 
problem. As has been shown, it simply intensified the evils 
of the system, for it robbed the dominant minority of re- 
sponsibility and saddled upon the country the burden of gov- 
ernment by alien statesmen, who were ignorant of the coun- 
try's needs and indifferent to its demands. 

During the entire period England's policy was marked 
by vacillation and political cowardice. No intelligent Eng- 
lishman now denies the justice of emancipation, of church dis- 
establishment or of the land reforms that have been accom- 
plished, yet each and every one of these was denounced and 
obstructed as a scheme of anarchy. Concessions were 
granted ungraciously and always hedged about with restric- 
tions that made amending legislation necessary. Further- 
more, in nearly every case there was the discreditable specta- 
cle of a government obstinately refusing demands presented 
by orderly procedure and then hastening to grant them under 
the pressure of violent outbreaks. Thus it is that the twen- 
tieth century finds Ireland still unreconciled, still at enmity 
with England, still maintaining her demand for a complete 
overturning of the system of government which she condemns 
and repudiates. 



XXVI 
MISGOVERNMENT 

Even the very brief and imperfect review which has been 
given of Ireland's history will serve to explain in large meas- 
ure the present problems of the country and the persistent 
demand of the people for a radical change in the form of 
government. It remains now to describe that government 
as it is and to examine the claims put forth by the advocates 
of reform. 

From every standpoint, the development of Ireland 
during the seven hundred years since the first invasion has 
been abnormal. Geographically shut off from contact with 
Europe, the country has ever been at the mercy of England. 
It was within the power of Great Britain to mold Ireland's 
destiny, to make her an integral part of the empire. But this 
she has failed to do. She never, until the present genera- 
tion, sought to deal with the Irish as equals; she always re- 
garded and treated them as an inferior race, and her whole 
purpose was to extinguish absolutely the institutions and even 
the race of the owners of the country and substitute the insti- 
tutions and the race of the so-called Anglo-Saxon. It has 
been suggested that Ireland should have submitted grace- 
fully; that, having failed to drive out the invaders, she should 
have accepted the inevitable and shared in the prosperity of 
the "conqueror." The fact is that Ireland never had a 
chance for honorable terms. From century to century rebel- 
lion and civil war were forced upon her. The conquest was 
never complete, yet England arrogated to herself the rights 
of a conqueror, and whenever those rights were challenged 
she provoked revolt by plantations, persecutions and mas- 
sacres. 

During every period of tranquillity the vigor of the 
Irish race was proved by the rapidity with which she assimi- 
lated the invaders. The Norman, Elizabethan and Crom- 

219 



220 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

wellian planters, many of them, became ll more Irish than the 
Irish." This is a historical fact. But the country was never 
permitted to work out its own destiny. Fresh invasions, new 
plantations, new forms of oppression by landlords and the 
"garrison" invariably operated to split the races and provoke 
risings which could be put down by massacre and whole- 
sale deportation and confiscation. The policy was not to 
organize and develop the country for the benefit of all its 
inhabitants, but to exploit it for the benefit of a few. Even 
when the violent methods of invasion and penal enactments 
had been abandoned, England continued the same policy by 
different means. It would seem as if she had been animated 
by the hope that eventually, through the effects of emigration 
and sheer national weariness, the Irish people would be so 
weakened that the problem would disappear. The record of 
the seven hundred years has been summed up in a few terse 
and terrible words by a member of Parliament, J. M. Rob- 
ertson. As he is a Scotch Liberal, he will not be suspected 
of undue leanings toward Catholic Nationalism. Reviewing 
the history, he says : 

"Seven centuries of rapine and violence. Carelessness 
alternating with ferocity. Not a gleam of humanity nor of 
political wisdom. Not even the wisdom of the peasant who 
takes care of his beast lest it perish." 

As we have seen, the nineteenth century witnessed a 
change in methods, the sweeping away of many ancient 
abuses, the inauguration of great reforms. But still the 
basic evil remains. The government of Ireland in these 
opening days of the twentieth century is an anachronism, a 
perversion of liberty, a government of taxation without real 
representation, a cumbersome, costly and inefficient system of 
minority rule. Such statements as this are denounced by 
English Unionists as the falsest and most dangerous political 
heresy. Ireland, they say, is as free as England. She has 
103 out of the 670 members of the imperial Parliament, 
which governs both countries equitably; she has trial by jury, 
the habeas corpus, and now even a system of popular and 
elective government in local affairs (since 1898J. What 
more can she demand? 

To answer this question, and to determine which of the 



MISGOVERNMENT 221 

two views of the Irish government is correct, we must exam- 
ine the system as it was established and as it is. The Act of 
Union of 1800, as has already been made clear, did not effect 
a real union between the two governments. It effected, 
rather, a union between the government of England and the 
minority in Ireland. The Irish Parliament — which with all 
its faults had been at least a free agent — was destroyed, and 
the imperial Parliament, with the Irish representation noted 
above, made supreme. But this did not alter the fact that 
Ireland remained under the domination of the "garrison" as 
much as in the days of Cromwell. The minority was all but 
absolute. Their wishes were paramount with Parliament. 
It took twenty-nine years to< win religious equality, solemnly 
promised in 1800. It was not until 1869 that the burden of 
the Established Church was lifted. It was not until 1870 
that the first attempt was made to reform the intolerably 
vicious land system. To illustrate what the trend of gov- 
ernment was during the nineteenth century, a record has been 
made of the principal acts of Parliament affecting Ireland 
between 1829 and 1879. The following table shows the 
number of bills for the relief of tenants unsuccessfully intro- 
duced in the years named : 

1829 1 I 1853 2 



1830 1 

1831 1 

1835 1 

1836 2 



1855 1 

1856 1 

1858 1 

1871 1 



1845 2 i 1872 1 

1846 2 ! 1873 2 

1847 1 1874 4 

1848 2i 1875 2 



1849 1 

1850 2 

1851 1 

1852 1 



1876 3 

1877 2 

1878 5 

1879 5 



In a period of fifty years, then, we find forty-eight bills 
for the benefit of the suffering tenants introduced in the 
imperial Parliament. Not a single one of them was passed. 
During the same period there were forty-eight coercion acts, 
each establishing for the time being a form of martial law 
which placed the people at the mercy of magistrates appointed 
by Dublin Castle. During the nineteenth century there were 



222 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

eighty-seven of these acts. Three words fairly describe the 
course of the government of Ireland during that century. 
Corruption branded the so-called Union ; coercion was the 
remedy applied for fifty years to economic evils ; conciliation 
was the method of the last thirty years. Corruption and 
coercion have been done away with to a large extent, dis- 
credited by their failure and condemned by public opinion. 
Conciliation has accomplished much in the way of reform, 
but it leaves the basic problem of misgovernment unsolved. 

"Who (or what,) rules Ireland?" asks R. Barry O'Brien, 
in an exhaustive work recently issued. "It may be the English 
cabinet ; it may be Dublin Castle ; it may be the 'Irish' boards ; 
it may be all three combined; but it is not the Irish people." 

This is from an Irish writer, but the statement is strictly 
and impartially true. Whatever the government of Ireland 
may be, it is not self-government. The people are ruled by 
forces over which they exercise no control, which are really 
irresponsible. We can take the testimony of Joseph Cham- 
berlain. In 1885 he said: 

"An Irishman cannot move a step, he cannot lift a finger 
in any parochial, municipal or educational work, without 
being confronted with, interfered with, controlled by an Eng- 
lish official, appointed by a foreign government and without 
a shade or shadow of representative authority." 

We can take the testimony of James Bryce, once Chief 
Secretary for Ireland, now British Minister to the United 
States, author of "The American Commonwealth." 

"The English government in Ireland," he wrote in 1883, 
"is still practically a foreign government. It seems to them 
(the Irish ) an external power, set in motion by forces they 
do not control, conducted on principles which may or may 
not be good, but which are not their principles." 

These utterances are as true to-day as when they were 
written, except that since 1898 there has been a form of 
Home Rule in strictly local affairs. The root of the whole 
matter is that Ireland is governed by men who are foreign in 
race, religion and political sympathies. In an ordinary discus- 
sion of this kind a reference to religion would have no place, 
but it must be remembered that the very system inflicted upon 
Ireland makes such reference necessary. During the last 



MISGOVERNMENT 223 

hundred years from three-fourths to four-fifths of the popu- 
lation has been Catholic. During that period there have 
been thirty-two Lords Lieutenant — several having held office 
more than once — not one of whom was a Catholic; fifty Chief 
Secretaries, not one a Catholic; twenty Under Secretaries, 
three being Catholics. Four of the Lords Lieutenant, seven of 
the Chief Secretaries and four of the Under Secretaries have 
been at least partially sympathetic toward the great mass of 
the Irish people; the others have been openly contemptuous of 
and antagonistic to the race they were appointed to govern. 

In the face of such a record as this, such a deliberate 
and long-continued policy of governing a people without 
regard to their wishes, it is idle to protest that the religious 
element should be excluded from the discussion. The reli- 
gious element was interjected by England, and for centuries 
has. been the very foundation of English rule; it will be elimi- 
nated when the religious test for governmental positions is 
abandoned in practice as well as in theory and when the 
majority of the people of Ireland have fair representation. 
This does not mean that the appointment of Catholics to 
government offices would solve the problem; in fact, the 
patriotism of such appointees is often under suspicion. 
What the Irish want is Irish appointments (Catholic and 
Protestant,) by an Irish national government. 

An inevitable result of the system — the invasions and 
plantations from the twelfth to the eighteenth century and 
the Dublin Castle government of to-day — has been to divide 
the people into two hostile camps. It should be observed 
that the separation is not one of race, for the chemistry of 
time has fused English, Norman, Danish and Celtic strains 
inextricably; nor is it to be defined strictly by religious test, 
since there are powerful Catholics with the minority, and 
many of the most famous leaders of the majority have been 
Protestants. The division is rather material than racial or 
religious. It is largely a matter of possession. Those who 
have for centuries held the land, the wealth and the political 
power of the country are determined to keep all they can of 
what they consider their rights; those who have been sup- 
pressed, excluded, discriminated against, are fighting to estab- 
lish a fairer, more democratic system, which will give them 



224 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

the share in the government to which their numbers entitle 
them. 

Geographically, the division is the northeastern part of 
the province of Ulster against almost all the rest of Ireland. 
Numerically, it is one-fourth of the people against three- 
fourths. Politically, it is Unionism against Nationalism — ■ 
the policy of perpetuating the present system against the 
policy of establishing a free Irish Parliament. 

Those who uphold the existing form of government, 
including Dublin Castle, with all its hoary evils, are the mod- 
ern representatives of the "garrison" of old. Among them 
will be found most of the landlords, the exceptions being such 
broad-minded men as the Earl of Dunraven. With these 
reactionary descendants of the "planters" upon whom various 
sovereigns conferred lands confiscated from the Irish stand a 
horde of followers — lawyers, agents, bailiffs and other em- 
ployes ; also a large number of the prosperous middle class, 
manufacturers, business men, attorneys, and so on, who, like 
their forefathers, have found profit and security in clinging 
to the skirts of the ruling oligarchy. A second and important 
section of the Unionist group is made up of the Ulster Scotch, 
descendants of the settlers planted there by James I and Will- 
iam III on lands seized from the original owners. Alto- 
gether, there are about 1,250,000 of these Unionists. They 
are prone to insist that they are not Irishmen, but British 
loyalists; they are, in fact, more loyalist than the King, more 
English than the folk across the channel. By "loyalty" they 
do not mean devotion to the country where most of them 
were born, where they reside and make their living, but loy- 
alty to the Union, to the system under which they impose their 
will upon three-fourths of the inhabitants of the country.—-"" - 

Incidentally, it may be said that Ulster presents a prob- 
lem distinct from all the rest of Ireland. It is infinitely more 
prosperous. As a center of manufacturing it rivals the fac- 
tory districts of England. The people — we are speaking of 
the northeastern part — are better fed, better housed and in 
every way more thriving than those of most of the rest of the 
country. These facts constitute one of the most popular 
arguments of Unionism. All this prosperity, it is declared, 
is due to the religious training of the people. The great 



MISGOVERNMENT 225 

manufacturing interests are said to be the products of Protes- 
tant intelligence, while the poverty and the lack of manufac- 
turing elsewhere are the inevitable results of Catholic ignor- 
ance and shiftlessness. 

There may be something in the argument; at least it 
may be conceded that there is more thrift, more mechanical 
genius, more artisanship, in the Scotch character than in the 
Irish. But it should be remembered that for hundreds of 
years the former were sedulously favored by legislation, while 
the latter were deliberately excluded by statutes from the free 
exercise of trade and industry. Ulster, as part of the 
Ascendency, benefited by every form of legislative encourage- 
ment which the "garrison" could devise; for a hundred years 
virtually every means of business and professional livelihood 
was closed to men not of the Ulster religion. Ulster thus 
obtained a lead which the rest of the country has never been 
able to overcome. Industries cannot be established offhand; 
they require a long time for development of natural resources 
and the training of skilled labor. During the period of dis- 
criminating protection to one class of the people they built up 
manufacturing interests which cannot be dislodged. They 
may well be proud of their success, but not to the extent of 
condemning as impotent their fellow-countrymen who suf- 
fered so long under the handicap of exclusion. The same dis- 
crimination ruled in agricultural affairs. From the begin- 
ning Ulster has enjoyed the inestimable advantage of tenant 
right under the "Ulster Custom." By this enactment the ten- 
ant in that section has always held a proprietary interest in 
improvements made upon his rented land by his own labor; 
it was not until 1870 that the same right was conferred on 
tenants throughout the rest of Ireland. 

Yet Ulster, now so passionately "Loyalist," or anti-Irish, 
has twice been in arms. In 1782 Ulster was the backbone of 
the demand which won from England a free Parliament, and 
in 1798 Wolf Tone enlisted many Ulstermen as rebels. The 
Union of 1800, perpetuating, as it did, the ascendency of Ul- 
ster in Irish affairs, made the province "loyal," and so it has 
stayed ever since. It is necessary to remark, however, that 
the term "Ulster," used politically, does not mean the whole 
province. In the first place, of the nine counties, Donegal, 
15 



226 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

Cavan and Monaghan are almost exclusively Catholic, while 
in Tyrone, Armagh and Fermanagh Protestants and Catho- 
lics are about equally divided; it is only in Down, Antrim and 
Derry, and especially in the cities of Londonderry and Bel- 
fast, that the Protestants are in a great majority. The Na- 
tionalists now hold nearly half of Ulster's thirty-four seats in 
Parliament, whereas thirty years ago they had not a single 
one. They even have a member from Belfast, the strong- 
hold of Orange opposition. 

It is worth while, too, to note that among the Ulster 
Presbyterians two forces have always been at work, a racial 
tendency toward independence and democracy, and a strong 
religious feeling. The former made Ulster a foe of the 
landlord-ruled Irish Parliament and of the exactions of the 
state (Anglican) church in the form of tithes collected from 
Presbyterians; the latter grew into hatred of Catholicism. 
The landlords always made use of the conflict in principle; 
they overcame the tendency toward democracy by fomenting 
religious strife. Whenever it seemed likely that men of the 
two faiths might unite, even for so innocuous a purpose as 
obtaining land reform, the fires of religious passion were re- 
lighted and the two elements driven apart. Outbursts of 
fanaticism continue to this day, but they are growing less 
frequent and less bitter. There is hope that some day the 
spirit of democracy in Ulster will outgrow the spirit of in- 
tolerance and that the province will realize that it is better 
to be a part of a united Ireland than a tool of Toryism and 
reaction. 

Meanwhile the "garrison" — the landlords, the social 
aristocracy and their supporters in northeastern Ulster — re- 
mains supreme. But it is doomed. The processes of evolu- 
tion cannot be stayed, and evolution is making the "garrison" 
the vermiform appendix of the Irish political body. The 
"mercenaries of England and parasites of Ireland" have lost 
ground rapidly during the last forty years. The first blow 
was the disestablishment of the state church in 1869. In the 
very next year came the establishment of tenant right, the ex- 
tension of the "Ulster custom" to all of Ireland. In 188 1 
the first move toward Land Purchase was made, and now the 
peasants are rapidly becoming landowners, and hence power- 



MISGOVERNMENT 227 

ful factors in the country's development. In 1884 the fran- 
chise was extended; the voters now number fourteen per cent, 
of the population, whereas in 1832 they numbered only 1.19 
per cent. And in 1898 the right of self-government (that 
is, Home Rule) in local affairs was won, establishing Na- 
tionalist authority in twenty-seven of the thirty-two counties. 
Yet while the "garrison" is gradually losing its grip, it still re- 
tains immense authority. It no longer dictates the laws, but 
it administers them. It is supreme in Dublin Castle, it dom- 
inates the judiciary, it controls the police and the local courts. 
It has only nineteen of the one hundred and three members 
of the House of Commons, but it has full sway in the ad- 
ministration in Ireland. 

Slowly, but surely, it is passing away, and passing un- 
honored. Its exit from the stage is not graceful, not even 
dignified. Throughout its long ascendency the landlord 
"garrison" fought every reform idea advanced for the better 
government of the country: religious emancipation, church 
disestablishment, tenant right, land purchase, educational 
equality, extension of the franchise, local government. In 
fighting the inevitable transfer of the land to the people it 
haggles to wring the last possible shilling of purchase money. 
In opposing Home Rule it clings desperately to the "right" 
of minority rule. It offers nothing constructive, for Union- 
ism is but the negation of Nationalism. 

Against this reactionary element are arrayed the great 
mass of the Irish people. They are now completely united. 
Sinn Fein, an organization of some strength, opposes parlia- 
mentary action, despite the remarkable accomplishments of 
the last generation, and the advocates (in theory) of "physi- 
cal force" are also contemptuous. Nevertheless, it is appar- 
ent that the national spirit of Ireland is represented in the 
work of the Irish Parliamentary Party and its supporting 
organization, the United Irish League, under the able leader- 
ship of John E. Redmond. For twenty-five years the party 
has been in Parliament, but not of it ; sometimes obstructing, 
sometimes compromising, sometimes failing, but almost al- 
ways going forward. Since 1900 it has been united, and is 
the most compact, most ably directed force in the House of 
Commons to-day. 



XXVII 
DUBLIN CASTLE 

In pursuing a study of the government of Ireland, 
against which the people maintain an unceasing protest, we 
find it characterized in rather strong terms of disapproba- 
tion. Denunciation from Nationalist critics may be taken 
for granted; more weight, perhaps, may be given to the 
utterances of men less directly interested. 

"I say the time has come," declared Joseph Chamber- 
lain several years ago, "to reform altogether the absurd 
and irritating anachronism which is known as Dublin Cas- 
tle, to sweep away altogether the alien boards of foreign 
officials and to substitute for them a genuine Irish adminis- 
tration for purely Irish business." 

"The government of Ireland," declared Lord Rose- 
bery, "is the most inefficient government in the whole world." 

"Dublin Castle is not merely a foreign power," writes 
L. Paul-Dubois, a noted French historian, "it is at once hos- 
tile, anti-democratic, mercenary and irresponsible." 

"Irish administration," said Lord Dunraven, "is the 
most costly and Jeast efficient in the world. We are gov- 
erned as no other people in the world are governed. Castle 
government is not democratic, it is not despotic, it is not an 
oligarchy. No one has any control over these Irish boards. 
No one can say that such a form of government is suitable to 
the needs of the country or the age in which we live." 

"A chaotic anachronism," was the terse description of 
Dublin Castle by Sir West Ridgeway, who was Under Sec- 
retary — that is, virtual head of the Castle government — 
from 1887 to 1892. Finally, I shall quote just one Irish 
Nationalist, to show that Nationalism is not a matter of re- 
ligion. Alfred Webb, who died in July, 1908, was bred a 
Quaker and throughout all his long life maintained the sim- 
plicity, dignity and moral courage of the society to which 

228 



DUBLIN CASTLE 229 

he belonged. He was treasurer of the United Irish League, 
and for several years was the unopposed representative in, 
Parliament of an overwhelmingly Catholic constituency. 
Here are some of his utterances: 

"Where else but in Ireland do men plume themselves 
on esteeming their fellow-countrymen unfit for the manage- 
ment of their own affairs?" 

"Time has belied every evil prognostication regarding 
the character and capacity of the Irish people." 

"The difference between Ireland and other countries in- 
vaded by the Anglo-Saxon is that in Ireland the natives have 
withstood the efforts to annihilate or assimilate them, or 
make them in thought part of the conquering state; their 
own traditions, and not those of the conquerors, still animate 
and inspire them." 

"Until Great Britain restores to us that of which she 
has robbed us — self-government — her desire that we should 
forget the past is an insult to our intelligence." 

Now, what is this system of government which calls 
forth such unsparing denunciation? How does it differ from 
the government of England and Scotland, which causes no 
such wholesale opposition? The basis of it is the Act of 
Union of 1800. That Act, forced upon Ireland against its 
will, effected a union only of the Parliaments of Great 
Britain and Ireland — or, rather, it submerged the legislature 
of the latter in the Imperial legislature. It did not effect 
a union as regards the civil law, the judiciary or the admin- 
istration. The administration in Ireland to-day remains 
just about as English and as anti-Irish as it was in 1800 
and before. It centers in Dublin Castle, and the name of 
that institution is the popular and accurate designation of 
the power that controls the destinies of Ireland. 

Dublin Castle, physically speaking, is a collection of 
buildings in the heart of Dublin. It is the palace of the Vice- 
roy, or Lord Lieutenant; it is also the seat of administration, 
a military depot and headquarters of the constabulary and 
secret police. Administratively speaking, Dublin Castle in- 
cludes many other buildings throughout Dublin, housing va- 
rious departments, as well as some hundreds of barracks, de- 
pots and other appurtenances throughout the country, with 



230 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

all the officials and machinery of the government. At the 
head of Dublin Castle is the Viceroy, invariably a Protestant 
peer, either English or Scotch or Irish. He is appointed by 
the Crown, and in turn appoints a Privy Council of about 
sixty members, consisting of royal personages, retired chief 
secretaries, high judges and other persons of distinction. 
This is an advisory body, but also exercises certain judicial 
functions. The Lord Lieutenant, however, is largely a 
figurehead, his chief office being to preside over official society, 
sign proclamations and generally act as representative of the 
sovereign. 

The real head of the government is the Chief Secretary 
for Ireland, a member of the imperial Parliament and 
responsible to it, and holding a seat in the cabinet. A new 
Chief Secretary is appointed — nominally by the Crown, but 
really by the party in power — with each party change in 
England, or oftener than that. This means that the respon- 
sible head of the Irish government is changed about once in 
every two years, so that no incumbent ever has time, if he has 
the inclination, to formulate and put in operation a definite, 
helpful policy. 

In these two offices may be observed the most important 
differences between the government of Ireland and that of 
Great Britain. In the larger country the real ruler is the 
Premier, who is invariably the most popular and influential 
man in the party which has carried the preceding election. 
The Premier is the choice of the people, the representative of 
their will; not even the sovereign can prevent his taking and 
exercising the vast authority of the office. In the same way 
every member of the cabinet, each of whom is head of an 
important department, is virtually appointed by the people 
and is actually responsible to them. In direct contrast with 
this condition, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland is named by the 
Crown without the slightest reference to the wishes of the 
Irish people. The Chief Secretary, too, is thrust upon them, 
and while sometimes he is sympathetic, he can never be any- 
thing but a foreigner. He distinctly is not the choice of the 
people, and the machinery of Dublin Castle is such that he 
never is free to carry out policies which he may advocate. 
The Under Secretary is in some respects more powerful than 



DUBLIN CASTLE 231 

the Chief who appoints him. He resides in Dublin and is the 
actual director of the Castle machine, since for the greater 
part of the year the Chief Secretary is attending Parliament 
in London. The Under Secretary likewise is appointed with- 
out any regard to the desires of the inhabitants of Ireland. 

Under these three officials — one a figurehead, one a 
member of the English cabinet, one a resident secretary, all 
appointed by the British government — the affairs of Ireland 
are administered by a great nest of bureaus, departments and 
boards. There are sixty-seven of them — sixty-seven costly, 
complicated, irresponsible bodies conducting the govern- 
mental business of the poorest nation in Europe, and not a 
single one of them within the remotest reach of public 
opinion ! As an illustration of what the Irish government is, 
I give a list of the "sixty-seven varieties" : 

Lord Lieutenant's Household, Chief Secretary's Office, State 
Paper Department, Office of Arms, Treasury Remembrancer, Na- 
tional School Teachers' Superannuation Office, Conservators of 
Fisheries, Registrar of Petty Sessions Clerks, General Prisons 
Board, Office of Reformatory and Industrial Schools, Inspectors of 
Lunatic Asylums, Public Loan Fund Board, Royal Irish Con- 
stabulary Office, Dublin Metropolitan Police Board Office. 

Local Government Board, Board of Trade, Customs, Inland 
Revenue (Stamp and Tax, Excise and Estate Duty Offices), Sta- 
tionery Office, Intermediate Education Board, General Valuation 
and Boundary Survey Office, Board of Public Works, Civil Service 
Commission, Land Commission, Land Estates Commissioners, Land 
Office of the Public Trustee, National Gallery, Department of 
Agriculture and Technical Instruction, Fisheries Office, Veterinary 
Department, College of Science, School of Art, Science and Art 
Museum, National Library. 

Board of National Education, General Register Office, Con- 
gested Districts Board, Registry of Deeds, Postoffice Department, 
Geological Survey, Commissioners of Charitable Donations and 
Bequests, Commissioners of Education in Ireland (not the same 
as the Board of National Education), Ordnance Survey. In- 
spectors of Factories, Auditor's Office of War Department, Royal 
Naval Reserve Office, Woods and Forests Office, Public Record 
Office, Joint Stock Companies' Registry Office, Registrar of 
Friendly Societies, Office of the Royal University, Commissioners 
of Lighthouses, Lunacy Department, Crown and Hanaper Office, 
Local Registration of Title Office, Record and Writ Office, Con- 
solidated Taxing Office, Consolidated Accounting Office, Chancery 
Registrar's Office, Principal Registry Office of Probate, King's 
Bench Division Office, Lord Chancellor's Court, Master of the 
Rolls Court, Chancery Division Court, Land Judges' Court, Bank- 
ruptcy Court and Admiralty Court. 



232 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

One fact is so vital to an understanding of the case that 
reiteration cannot be avoided. Not one of these bureaus, 
offices and departments is responsible to the people of Ire- 
land. Some of them are responsible directly to the British 
government; some are merely local branches of English 
departments ; some are responsible in theory to the Chief Sec- 
retary; but none of them has anything to fear from or any 
respect for. the public opinion of the country whose affairs 
they direct. There have been in recent years some able and 
conscientious. Chief Secretaries, such as John Morley, Gerald 
Balfour, James Bryce and the present incumbent, Augustine 
Birrell ; but it is quite obvious that they have been helpless in 
the grasp of the Dublin Castle machine. With its intricate 
tangle of red tape, its horde of more than 100,000 perma- 
nent officials and employes, its independent and irresponsible 
Chief Secretaries, Dublin Castle rules Ireland according to 
its own sweet will, and Dublin Castle represents the minority 
and despises the majority as did the cliques of land-grabbing 
adventurers in the days of the "plantations." 

In Great Britain each department is represented in the 
House of Commons by a Minister, placed there by the people 
of England or Scotland, as the case may be, and instantly 
within reach — through "parliamentary questions" — of the 
public opinion of the two countries. All the departments of 
Ireland are represented by one man, the Chief Secretary, and 
he is directly responsible, as president, for no fewer than 
twenty of them. Were each of his days a week long he could 
never master the details of these departments; he must accept 
the reports of the permanent officials, who are quite out of 
reach of the people. Hence it is that Ireland is still ruled 
actually by the creatures of the "garrison," men who, when 
they are not absolutely hostile to public opinion, are perfectly 
indifferent to it. 

Next to the irresponsible despotism of Dublin Castle, 
the greatest evil of the system is its extravagance. Ireland, 
the poorest country in western Europe, pays more per capita 
to be misgoverned than any other country pays for good 
administration. Since the Union of 1800 the taxation con- 
tributed by Ireland has steadily increased, while the popula- 
tion and prosperity during the last fifty years have as steadily 



DUBLIN CASTLE 233 

decreased. In 1800 the taxation was $15,000,000; in 1815, 
$32,500,000; now Ireland contributes about $55,000,000 to 
the Imperial treasury. Of this latter sum, nearly $40,000,- 
ooo is spent upon the government of Ireland. For nearly 
fifty years the inequalities of the system of taxation have 
been agitated. In 1864 the chairman of a committee of 
inquiry declared that "Ireland is the most heavily taxed coun- 
try in Europe and England the most lightly taxed." A com- 
mission in 1895, composed of Ulster Unionists^ as well as 
Nationalists, made a similar report. It found that Ireland 
was overtaxed $.12,500,000 a year; since then taxes have 
increased heavily. It is a matter of official record that Ire- 
Ian contributes one-eleventh as much as Great Britain, while 
her taxable capacity is much less than one-twentieth. More- 
over, while in Great Britain one-half the taxes collected are 
direct, in Ireland more than seventy per cent, are indirect — 
that is, nearly three-fourths of the tax burden falls upon food 
and other necessaries of the poor. The per capita taxation 
was $5 in 1850; $12.50 in 1900. 

Now as to the cost of the government which is so unsat- 
isfactory to Ireland. The country must support the Viceroy, 
or Lord Lieutenant, whose salary is twice that of the Presi- 
dent of the United States, and his expensive household. It 
must support the sixty-seven irresponsible departments we 
have named, with their 100,000 or more officials and em- 
ployes, including 11,000 police. Perhaps comparisons will 
best illustrate the extravagance of the Irish administration. 
Scotland should afford a fair comparison, as her population is 
about the same — 4,472,000 in Scotland, against 4,458,000 in 
Ireland. Comparison will also be made with England and 
Wales. 

Scotland's government costs less than $30,000,000 a 
year; Ireland's, nearly $40,000,000, though the population is 
less. 

Scotland supports 963 officials, whose incomes exceed 
$800 a year; Ireland supports 4539 officials of the same 
class — and none of them chosen by the people. 

Scotland pays $2,500,000 annually for police; Ireland 
pays $7,500,000. 

Scotland's prison board, caring for 2900 convicts, costs 



234 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

$435,000 annually; Ireland's prison board, with 2500 con- 
victs, costs $535,000 annually. 

Scotland's courts in 1907 cost $1,000,000; Ireland's in 
the same year cost $1,840,000. 

England pays for government $5.75 per capita; Scot- 
land, $5.80; Ireland, $8.50. 

Of England's national income, one-fortieth is expended 
on her home government; of Ireland's, more than one-tenth. 

It is perfectly clear, then, that Ireland's government, 
unsatisfactory as it is to the people, and lacking almost 
wholly the virtue of representing public opinion, is more than 
fifty per cent, costlier than the government of England or 
Scotland. And the pressure of the burden is infinitely 
greater because Ireland is the poorest of the three countries. 
During the last century, while the cost of government has so 
rapidly increased, the population of England has been multi- 
plied by four and that of Scotland by three, while Ireland's 
has decreased one-fourth. During the last sixty years the 
population of England has doubled, while that of Ireland 
has fallen fifty per cent. In England the average weekly 
wage of agricultural laborers is $4.65 ; in Scotland, $4.80; in 
Ireland, $2.72. Comparing Ireland and England, the popu- 
lation of Ireland is one-seventh, yet her railway passenger* 
number only one-thirty-seventh and her freight traffic only 
one-seventeenth. Poorest of the three countries, Ireland 
bears relatively the heaviest burden. 

But in examining the cost of government, which is one 
of the most serious counts in the indictment against the pres- 
ent system, the most glaring inequalities are undoubtedly to 
be found in the police records. In the policing of Ireland we 
find the policy of Dublin Castle in full flower. It should be 
understood, first, that the Royal Irish Constabulary is quite 
different from the police force as it is known in England, 
Wales, Scotland and America. It is infinitely more than an 
organization for the preservation of the peace and the pre- 
vention and detection of crime; it is, in fact, a military force, 
an army of occupation, a reinforcement of the regular army. 
It consists of more than 11,000 men, armed with carbines 
and bayonets, swords and revolvers, and occupies some hun- 



DUBLIN CASTLE 235 

dreds of strongly fortified barracks throughout the country. 
In addition, there are supplementary forces in Dublin, Bel- 
fast and Derry. But the chief thing to observe is that this 
army of occupation, miscalled a police force, is controlled by 
Dublin Castle; that is to say, by the "foreign" government. 
The people of Ireland have absolutely nothing to do with 
the Royal Irish Constabulary, except to pay them. While 
the expenditure is paid out of the imperial treasury, it is 
charged, of course, to Ireland, and becomes a burden upon 
the Irish taxpayer. The Dublin Castle commanders of the 
force are English army officers. They direct it and control 
it without the slightest reference to. the popular will and 
without any responsibility to the public. Now let us com- 
pare the size and the cost of this irresponsible organization 
with the size and cost of the police in other parts of the 
empire. Here are the figures for 1906: 

Population. Police. 

England and Wales 34,547,000 46,027 

Ireland 4,387,000 11,126 

Another way to look at it is this: In. Scotland there is 
one policeman to. every 857 of population; in England, one 
to 750; in Ireland, one to 394. Now as to the cost. It has 
already been shown that Scotland pays for her police 
$2,500,000 a year; Ireland, $7,500,000. Leaving out Lon- 
don and Dublin, the two capitals, England's police cost fifty- 
six cents per capita of population; Ireland's, $1.64. There 
must be some very good reason for these extraordinary dis- 
crepancies — for maintaining in Ireland much more than 
twice as many police, in proportion to population, as are 
maintained in England, Wales or Scotland. The obvious 
inference would be that crime is rampant in Ireland and that 
only an exceptional force of armed men could keep the vio- 
lent tendencies of the people within bounds. 

I have no personal experiences to bear out such a charge. 
I have traveled rather extensively in Ireland, have studied 
the daily life of the country at fairly close range and have 
kept in touch with the newspapers, friendly and unfriendly 
to the majority of the people. Yet I have observed no 
extraordinary inclination to crime, nor do I recall any publi- 
cations which indicate such a tendency. But my testimony, 
after all, as that of a mere visitor, is not of much value. 



236 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

The uncolored and incontrovertible facts will be found in 
government reports. And these show that in Ireland crime 
is relatively a great deal less frequent and less serious than 
in Great Britain. 

"Nothing could be falser," writes L. Paul-Dubois, 
"than the prejudice which paints Ireland as a pandemonium 
of brigands and assassins. There is no professional criminal 
class in Ireland. There may have been a considerable volume 
of crime during the agrarian war, but I do not know a coun- 
try in Europe in which the figures are lower in normal times. 
In 1 90 1, for instance, an average year, there were in Eng- 
land thirty-three convictions for every 100,000 inhabitants, 
in Scotland forty-one and in Ireland only twenty-seven. 
Every year sees the closing of some unused prison, and at the 
Assizes, as often as not, the judge receives from the sheriff 
the traditional pair of white gloves, which indicate that his 
white hands will not have to be raised in passing sentence on 
any one." 

But this is not official. Let us consult the government's 
"Judicial Statistics (Criminal)" for England and Wales and 
for Ireland. "As to whether crime is increasing or decreas- 
ing," says the report for 1905, "the most trustworthy answer 
is to be found in the return as to indictable offenses. They 
include all the most serious forms of crime. * * * 
Non-indictable offenses include very many which partake of 
a civil character." Taking the year 1906, when the popula- 
tion of England and Wales was 34,547,000 and of Ireland 
4,387,000, we find indictable offenses returned as follows: 

Number. Per 100,000. 

England and Wales 91,665 265 

Ireland 9,465 215 

In the official report for the year 1907 we find this 
record : 

Crimes. Per 100,000. 

England and Wales 98,822 283 

Ireland 9,418 220 

These figures show not only that crime in Ireland is 
from twenty to twenty-five per cent, less than across the chan- 
nel, but that increase from year to year is less rapid. On this 
point the 1907 official reports say: 



DUBLIN CASTLE 237 

(England and Wales.) "Crimes proper (indictable 
offenses) have shown a marked increase, the number of 
indictable offenses reported to the police being greater than 
in any year since 1882." 

(Ireland.) "In the year 1907 the indictable offenses 
for the whole of Ireland, which had fallen from 9728 in 
1905 to 9465 in 1906, declined to 9418 in the period under 
notice." 

Part of the reduction, it should be observed, may be 
traced to the decreasing population; none the less, the com- 
parison is wholly favorable to Ireland. There is interest also 
in examining the character of the crimes in the two countries. 
Following are the official figures for 1907 : 

England-Wales. Ireland. 

Murder 132 23 

Manslaughter 141 41 

Felonious and malicious wounding 1,372 167 

Burglary, robbery and housebreaking.... 10,616 732 

Larceny of cattle 457 93 

Crimes against morals 1,724 118 

This table shows that relatively Ireland records a large 
number of murders and manslaughter cases; most of them 
were due to drink. Her record in robberies and crimes 
against morals is less than half of the proportionate record 
in England and Wales. Perhaps enough has been said to 
show that Ireland is not a crime-ridden country; that, on the 
contrary, it is more law-abiding than England itself. If 
further evidence is needed, we may note that the only jails in 
Wexford and Donegal counties were closed several years 
ago; that of two jails in Tipperary, one is now used as a con- 
vent, in which Sisters of Charity give technical instruction to 
poor girls; and that an unused jail in Mullingar, County 
Westmeath, is now the scene of meetings of the United Irish 
League. Members of the organization rather enjoy the 
humor of assembling in the building where a good many of 
them were imprisoned for making speeches against the gov- 
ernment. 

If the huge force of police is not needed, then, to cope 
with an exceptionally large criminal class, why is Ireland 
compelled to support such a body? The reason is that the 
Constabulary was founded in 1836 to support the landlords 



238 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

and enforce their demands, and has been used chiefly for 
that purpose ever since. The police have been turned over 
bodily to the landlords in the various wars against the 
tenants. They have been used as prosecutors, as well as pre- 
servers of order. I have seen uniformed men at public meet- 
ings taking shorthand notes of speeches; in countless cases, 
when the tenor of the speeches did not please the officers in 
command, the armed force dispersed the crowd, using batons 
on the heads of the audience. When touring the country on 
investigations I have been honored by having a policeman 
dog my footsteps. Members of the force are also detailed 
to protect landlords, their agents and the occupiers of 
"evicted" farms against the tenants; I heard of no case 
of their protecting a tenant against a landlord. They have 
been used also for the intimidation of peasants and to assist 
the civil forces in evicting tenants and destroying their 
homes. More than that, the official records are stained with 
proof that police' officers literally incited, and in some cases 
themselves committed, the most despicable crimes, then 
charged them to innocent men and caused convictions upon 
perjured testimony. 

Physically, the Royal Irish Constabulary is a splendid 
body of men, and there is no doubt that the vast majority of 
the rank and file are honest, courageous fellows, carrying out 
the orders of their superiors faithfully and with no mere vio^ 
lence than is necessary. None the less, this armed force is an 
intolerable burden to Ireland, and its absolute control by the 
irresponsible clique in Dublin Castle is one of the strongest 
indictments of the system of misgovernment which is crum- 
bling before the assaults of public opinion. 



XXVIII 
THE SYSTEM A FAILURE 

These letters have traced, at considerable length, the 
historical development of the Irish question; have described 
the remarkable economic changes for the better wrought by 
the remedial legislation of the last forty years, and have set 
forth some of the more obvious evils and defects of the 
present system of government. This system the Irish people 
have been fighting for more than one hundred years to over- 
turn. The Union of 1800, as has been shown, was forced 
upon the country against the popular will, through the 
debauchery of the landlord-owned Irish Parliament. Its 
terms have never been accepted by Ireland. The statute of 
limitations has never been permitted to run against the 
demand that real Home Rule shall be restored to the nation. 
Settlement of the land problem, that condition which more 
than anything else has retarded the development of Ireland, 
is proceeding slowly but surely to a successful culmination. 
The operation of the Land Purchase Acts and the mag- 
nificent work of the Congested Districts Board, both of 
which agencies will be made more effective by the land bill 
now pending, are transforming the agricultural population 
from tenants to proprietors. This change does more than 
open to the farming class — by far the largest class in Ire- 
land — opportunities for prosperity and better living ; it roots 
the people in the soil, tends to check the deadly drain of 
emigration and brings nearer the day when self-government 
can no longer be denied. It is proposed now to discuss the 
grounds upon which rests the Irish demand for Home Rule. 
Setting aside the theoretical right of a people to manage 
their own affairs, we shall examine it strictly from a practical 
standpoint. 

First and foremost, English government of Ireland has 

239 



240 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

proved a failure. For more than seven hundred years Eng- 
land has dominated her sister country; she has "conquered" 
her not once, but three or four times ; she has imposed upon 
her English rulers, English laws, English institutions; she 
even cleared a large part of the country of its original owners 
and planted English and Scotch settlers in their room. 
Finally she destroyed the Irish Parliament, removed the seat 
of government from Dublin to Westminster, and for the last 
century has tried the experiment of ruling Ireland by a 
bureaucracy made up of representatives of the minority, men 
foreign in race and sympathy to the great mass of the people. 
And the end is failure. In increasing numbers have English 
statesmen of brains come to realize that the virtually unani- 
mous testimony of students and historians is correct; the sys- 
tem is an irremediable failure, and there will be neither peace 
nor prosperity in the island until self-government is substi- 
tuted for the complicated and costly machinery of alien rule. 
It should not be difficult to determine the ill success of 
the present system, which, in truth, has comparatively few 
defenders outside the ranks of the most rabid landlords and 
their followers and those who uphold it on purely religious 
grounds. Governments, like individuals, must be judged by 
results. What conditions have been produced in Ireland by 
subjecting it to the rule fashioned in the Act of Union? A 
good government, a successful government, is one which pre- 
serves order and promotes the welfare and contentment of 
the whole people. Does the government of Ireland meet 
these tests? Let us see what has been the course of events 
during the last hundred years. In that period the population 
of England, of Scotland and probably of every other country 
in the world has steadily increased; the population of Ire- 
land, which grew rapidly up to 1840, has as steadily declined. 
England's population has been multiplied by four, Scotland's 
by three, while Ireland's has declined one-fourth — one-half 
in the last sixty years. Here are the figures for Ireland, by 
decennial periods : 

1801 5,500,000 1871 5,412,377 

1841 8,175,124 1881 5,174,836 

1851 6,552,385 1891 4,704,750 

1861 5,798,967 1901 4,458,775 




Photo copyright by Purdy, Boston. 

JOHN DILLON, M. P. 



THE SYSTEM A FAILURE 241 

Remembering that the drain of emigration is due to the 
evils of the old land system, inflicted by England as part of 
her system, the loss may be fairly charged to misgovernment. 
This is justified further by the fact that the partial lifting of 
the curse of landlordism has appreciably checked emigration. 
In September, 1909, an official report noted the first increase 
in the population since 1840. Four' million emigrants in 
sixty years — is that evidence of good government? Simi- 
larly, the economic condition of Ireland is inextricably bound 
up with the system of government forced upon the country, 
since for hundreds of years, as has been shown, the chief pur- 
pose of the system was to exploit Ireland for the benefit of 
England. The average wage of an agricultural laborer in 
England is $4.56, in Scotland $4.80 and in Ireland $2.72. 
The average wages of all classes are just half what they are 
in England. Ireland is the fourth meat-producing country in 
the world and the sixteenth meat-eating. Every year 20,000 
men and boys emigrate to England for the harvest season, to 
earn enough mefney to tide them over the winter. Through- 
out nearly the whole of Ireland there is an amazing lack of 
manufacturing. This is directly chargeable to misgovern- 
ment; indeed, the destruction of Irish industries was one of 
the most deliberate of the policies of England for two hun- 
dred years, and was carried out by means of carefully framed 
legislation. 

"There was a time," says Arthur Balfour, the English 
statesman, "when the British Parliament thought they were 
well employed in crushing out Irish manufactures in the 
interests of the British producer." 

Whenever Ireland established an industry and began to 
compete with English producers in the same line laws were 
made to strangle it. Agricultural products were the first to 
feel the blow. As early as 1663 a law was passed prohibit- 
ing all exports from Ireland to the colonics except victuals, 
servants, horses and salt, and prohibiting the sending of Irish 
cattle to England, this latter enterprise being denounced as 
"a public and common nuisance." Beef, pork, butter and 
cheese were subsequently excluded, and additional statutes 
stopped the exportation from Ireland to the English planta- 
tions of sugar, cotton, wool, tobacco, indigo, ginger and fus- 
16 



242 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

tian. Under William III the export of wool and woolen 
manufactures from Ireland was prohibited, the penalty being 
forfeiture of goods and ship and heavy fines for each offense. 
By such legislation as this Irish manufacture of cotton, glass, 
iron and hats was also suppressed. 

"One by one," wrote Lord Dufferin, "each of our 
nascent industries was either strangled in its birth or handed 
over, gagged and bound, to the jealous custody of the rival 
interests of England, until at last every fountain of wealth 
was hermetically sealed, and even the traditions of com- 
mercial enterprise have perished through desuetude." 

That the stagnation of industry in Ireland is due to 
misgovernment, in fact, no attempt is made to deny. Cor- 
roborative evidence is found in the revival which followed 
the establishment of a free Irish Parliament in 1782. 
Almost immediately ruined factories were rebuilt, new ones 
sprang up, the urban population rose rapidly and everywhere 
skilled labor was put in training. But after the Union of 
1800 there was as distinct and as rapid a decline. Stagna- 
tion and decay spread throughout industrial Ireland, and the 
conditions to-day have resulted. 

Here it is necessary to go back a little. Opponents of 
Home Rule will admit that Ireland as a whole has suffered 
a decline in population, a heavy drain in emigration and an 
industrial relapse. But, they say, vehemently, all, or very 
nearly all, of. the loss has been in the south and west; it is 
Nationalist. Ireland that has suffered, because of the notori- 
ous ignorance and incapacity of the people; Ulster, on the 
contrary, has prospered continuously, because of the intelli- 
gence and thrift of its inhabitants. This view is highly inter- 
esting and quite worthy of examination. Here are the emi- 
gration figures for the four provinces for 1906: 

Leinster 5,079 Munster 10,054 

Connaught 7,880 Ulster 12,331 

There is more rapid emigration at this time from Ulster, 
then, than from any other province. Taking a broader view, 
Ulster lost thirty-four per cent, of her population between 
1 841 and 1 90 1, while all Ireland lost forty-five per cent. It 
appears, therefore, that Ulster has suffered with the rest of 



THE SYSTEM A FAILURE 243 

the country from the governmental conditions which reduce 
population. Ulster, of course, remains the chief industrial 
center, and is likely to retain its supremacy, for the reason 
that the skilled labor is available there and in no> other part 
of the island. But gradual stagnation is visible there, too. 
Following are^the number of persons employed in the textile 
industries in the years named : 

1871 193,864 1891 129,884 

1881 129,787 1901 109,588 

Linen manufacture, by far the largest of the textile 
industries, employed 85,000 persons in 189 1 ; it employs now 
about 70,000. The woolen industry shows a like decline. 

Another test of good government is its effect upon the 
temper of the people. Good government produces peace and 
contentment. Since the Act of Union there have been three 
insurrections — in 1803, in 1848 and in 1867. And in order 
to forestall the retort that these outbursts were due to reli- 
gious hatred of England, let us note that Emmet, in 1803, 
and Thomas Davis, John Mitchel and Smith O'Brien, in 
1848, were Protestants. In addition to these armed risings, 
there has been a succession of unarmed rebellions against 
English authority, which English statesmen of to-day are 
compelled to acknowledge were forced upon the people by 
intolerable oppression. 

Good government establishes civil and religious liberty. 
As evidence upon the former we find a Coercion Act for 
every year of the nineteenth century; that is, the suspension 
of trial by jury, free speech, a free press and virtually every 
other form of political freedom. Upon the matter of 
religious liberty we find that equality before the law was 
not granted until 1829, and that to-day discrimination on 
religious grounds permeates the government, the profes- 
sional classes and every field of activity which the upholders 
of the present system control. 

Good government means just taxation. Yet we have 
the testimony of an English commission that Ireland was 
overtaxed $12,500,000 a year, in proportion to England, in 
1895, and $10,000,000 has been added to the taxation since 
then. 

The very foundation stone of good government is fair 



244 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

representation. Where Ireland stands in this regard has 
already been demonstrated. True, she has fair representa- 
tion in the British Parliament, but in the executive, adminis- 
trative and judicial departments in Ireland the power is in 
the hands of a reactionary minority, the great mass of the 
people having no voice whatever in these affairs. 

Good government implies a judicial system responsive 
in some measure to public opinion and untainted by favorit- 
ism or class prejudice. The high courts of Ireland are domi- 
nated absolutely by the "garrison," while the minor judiciary 
is made up almost exclusively of landlords or their agents or 
sympathizers, men who, for the most part, are antagonistic 
to the people and in any event are quite out of reach of 
popular opinion. 

By every test that can be applied the present system of 
governing Ireland is a failure. It is complicated, costly, irre- 
sponsible, incrusted with prejudices and injustices, a detri- 
ment to the advancement of the country and its people, 
because it is wholly removed from and antagonistic to the 
public opinion of the nation. No less is it a disadvantage to 
Great Britain. The Irish Parliamentary Party, as has been 
pointed out, is in Parliament, but not of it. The members 
frankly appear in that body as foreigners. Their sole pur- 
pose is to serve Ireland, to win for her every advantage they 
can, and frequently they accomplish their ends by hampering 
and obstructing the business of the Empire. They will con- 
tinue to do this as long as they are there to represent Ire- 
land's protest. Gladstone's Home Rule bills of 1886 and 
1893 were defeated because they aroused the fears of Eng- 
lish imperialists for the unity and security of the Empire. 
Statesmen of to-day are realizing that continuance of the sys- 
tem which breeds Irish hostility must be a far greater peril 
than the granting of autonomy would be. It is difficult to 
understand the theory that governing a people against their 
will makes them a source of strength, while giving them the 
form of government they desire would arouse enmity. 

"After all," says L. Paul-Dubois, a sane and impartial 
observer, "is not Home Rule (call it by what name we will) 
the best of unionisms? Is it not the most solid basis and the 



THE SYSTEM A FAILURE 245 

surest guarantee of Anglo-Irish union ? England, moreover, 
cannot always deny to Ireland her rights, nor reserve all her 
severities for the sister isle and all her favors for the colonies. 
She cannot always allow the Irish question to remain an open 
sore, a factor of trouble between herself and that 'Greater 
Ireland,' the United States, whose friendship she has so long 
desired to win." 

"But," say the Unionists, "Ireland is disloyal. She 
attacks the Imperial policies of England. She presents to 
the world a constant spectacle of turmoil and dissension. If 
she were loyal her demands might receive more kindly atten- 
tion." 

Surely this is a strange attitude, when the history of the 
British empire shows, as might be expected, that loyalty is 
the result, and not the forerunner, of self-government. Aus- 
tralia, South Africa, Canada — all went through the same 
experience as Ireland, except that, being farther from the 
seat of the Imperial government, they were able to enforce 
their demands more rapidly. They had their "treasons," 
plots and rebellions; they suffered coercion, imprisonments, 
executions. They had, too, their local "Ulsters," groups of 
ultra-loyalists who called heaven to witness that they alone 
represented public opinion, and bitterly opposed concessions 
to the majority on the ground that such a course meant the 
disintegration of the Empire. Yet in each case autonomy 
was granted, and with what result? That rebellion and 
opposition died down, loyalty became universal and the great 
British federation of to-day was built upon a foundation of 
self-government, justice and mutual esteem. 

Let those who condemn Ireland for demanding Home 
Rule while opposing Imperial policies consider the case of 
Canada, as remarkable a parallel as may be found in history. 
There, as in Ireland, were two races and two religions, and 
they were separated by animosities far more bitter than 
to-day separate Nationalists and Unionists. England con- 
ferred upon the country, in response to agitation, a half-way 
compromise constitution. Upper Canada (now Ontario) 
and Lower Canada (now Quebec) had each an elected 
House of Assembly and a nominated "Senate." All execu- 



246 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

tive power, however, remained with the appointed governor 
and his council, who were responsible to London and in no 
degree whatsoever to the people of Canada. Against this 
system there arose a fierce agitation, which for years kept the 
country in turmoil. Monster meetings were held, when 
Nationalist banners were flaunted and Nationalist sentiments 
flung in the face of the government. Coercion just as savage 
as in Ireland was applied. Meetings were proscribed, speak- 
ers arrested and imprisoned, newspapers suppressed. 

. During all this time the Canadian "Ulster" was, of 
course, active, loudly proclaiming its loyalty — to England, 
not to Canada — and calling upon the government to exter- 
minate this propaganda of the majority and restore the rule 
of the minority. The whole trouble, they said — and how 
familiar it sounds! — was due to the fulminations of irre- 
sponsible agitators and the efforts of "a majority in numbers 
only" to dominate the "wealth, education and enterprise" of 
the country. In a final effort to quell the agitation England 
suspended the Canadian governmental system altogether. 
The effect was to consolidate the opposition and fan the 
embers of rebellion. In 1837, when the British empire was 
rejoicing over the ascent of Queen Victoria to the throne, 
Canada was in arms. The revolt was short-lived, but it was 
successful. England hastened to grant Home Rule, and for 
seventy years Canada, peaceful, loyal and prosperous, has 
been marching forward in the ranks of the free nations of 
the world. 

The story of Canada presents every feature of that of 
Ireland — disaffection, a diminishing population, industrial 
stagnation, racial and religious strife, open rebellion — except 
that she won her rights, while Ireland has not. Canada 
to-day is unaffectedly loyal to Great Britain, while her 
government is wholly free. There is no hostility between the 
races, and sectarian animosity is negligible. A French Cath- 
olic, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, is Prime Minister, honored by all 
citizens. Canada is growing in wealth, power and national 
stature; Ireland, which stands to-day exactly where Canada 
stood before Home Rule was granted, is disaffected, 
harassed by differences, afflicted with poverty and misgovern- 
ment. What is the inevitable deduction? 



THE SYSTEM A FAILURE 247 

It is found on the records of the Canadian Parliament, 
which again and again has urged the British government to 
grant to Ireland the Home Rule which Canada enjoys. It 
is found in the parliamentary records of every self-governing 
colony of the British empire to the same effect. It is found 
in the records of the British Parliament itself, not only in the 
speeches of such leaders as Gladstone and Bright, but in the 
passage of a Home Rule resolution through the House of 
Commons at this very session, supported by nearly five- 
sixths of the membership. 



XXIX 
HOME RULE TESTED 

Against the Home Rule demand of Ireland, backed by 
the unanimous indorsement of the colonies, by public opinion 
throughout the world and by the great Liberal Party in Eng- 
land, what have the Unionists to offer ? How do they 
attempt to justify their campaign to perpetuate a system of 
government which is so universally condemned and whose 
sole function is to make paramount the will of the minority? 
They present no argument except that it would be unfair to 
the minority to give the majority fair representation; that 
the "loyalists" would be oppressed by the majority, and an 
era of religious discrimination and persecution opened. 

One cannot but marvel at the frankness of this attitude. 
Having forcibly held minority rule for some three hundred 
years, and having clung as long as they could to legal dis- 
crimination on religious grounds, and maintaining to-day a 
strict religious test, not only in affairs of government, but in 
professional and commercial activities, they complain bitterly 
that government upon a fairly representative basis will inflict 
upon them their own policies. If what they say were true, 
who will say that selfish rule by a majority is worse than 
selfish rule by a minority? But is it true? How much have 
the timorous supporters of the oligarchy to fear? They 
fought emancipation as an opening of the door to persecu- 
tion; they fought extension of the franchise as an invitation 
to anarchy and spoliation; they have fought land reform and 
land purchase as desperate assaults upon property and stable 
government. Yet each of these, as every sane man knows, 
marked a step toward justice, equality and national pros- 
perity. Now they make their last stand against Home Rule 
upon reasoning just as logical as that they advanced against 
the other changes. 

248 




A RELIC OF THE PAST. 




A HOME OF TODAY. 



HOME RULE TESTED 249 

What have they to fear?' How much force is there in 
the plea that Hjome Rule would mean a reversal of the 
process of political and religious oppression? There is evi- 
dence upon which to base judgment. 

In 1898 was passed an act conferring on the Irish 
people self-government in local affairs — with the exception 
of the judiciary and the police. Previous to that time public 
business in each county was in the hands of a grand jury 
appointed by the sheriff, that is, by Dublin Castle. This 
body, made up of men wholly unsympathetic to most of the 
people, and quite removed from popular influence, fixed 
the tax rate and conducted all local affairs, having sweeping 
administrative as well as judicial functions. Under the Act 
of 1898 the grand juries were restricted to such powers as 
they have in this country. Local administration passed into 
the control of elected county councils. There are thirty-three 
of these, and three hundred and two urban and rural district 
councils, besides city councils in Dublin, Belfast, London- 
derry, Cork, Limerick and Waterford. All of these bodies 
are elected on a broad franchise, including women. Their 
operations are supervised by the Local Government Board, 
one of the departments of Dublin Castle. 

The change from the old system, obviously, was revolu- 
tionary. It was the establishment of democracy — Home 
Rule — in local affairs. By the elections Nationalist authority 
has been placed in charge of the public business of twenty- 
seven of the thirty-two' counties. The people of Nationalist 
Ireland and the people of the irreconcilable part of Ulster 
elect and control men of their own choice. Needless to say, the 
proposal to grant such a measure of self-government was 
bitterly denounced by the reactionary element. The great 
mass of the people, it was said, were quite unfit for the 
responsibilities of managing public affairs. Once the major- 
ity obtained the rights of free citizens they would start the 
country on the road to ruin by their tendencies toward ex- 
travagance and corruption and their mad desire to extermi- 
nate the minority. 

Never were prophecies of gloom more picturesquely 
made ridiculous by events. For eleven years Ireland has had 
Home Rule in local affairs, and the testimony, not of the 



250 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

people, but of the sternly critical Local Government Board 
and of Unionist leaders, is that the new order of things is a 
triumphant success. Conduct of the local bodies is not, to 
be sure, the pink of perfection; here and there time is wasted 
in acrimonious discussions and in anti-English demonstra- 
tions. But there has been no extravagance, there has been 
no oppression or persecution and there has been real capacity 
for economical and efficient government. 

Now, this is important. Granting to Ireland self-gov- 
ernment in local affairs was to be a test of the ability of the 
people to manage the larger activities of national govern- 
ment. Lord Salisbury, in 1885, predicted that the result of 
conferring local authority upon the people would be misman- 
agement, corruption and intolerance. Gerald Balfour, the 
English member, who had charge of the Local Government 
Act of 1898, on the other hand, declared that "if the coun- 
cilors did their work with business capacity, and in a spirit 
of toleration, it would mitigate one of the arguments which 
has always been felt to tell heavily in England against Home 
Rule." 

What has been the outcome ? The strongest testimony, 
naturally, must be that of the Local Government Board, 
which has supervisory powers over the county councils and 
other local bodies, and which is thoroughly Unionist in its 
sympathies, being one of the departments of Dublin Castle. 
At the end of the first year's trial of local self-government, 
in its report for 1900, this body said: 

"The predictions of those who affirmed that the new local bodies 
intrusted with the administration of a complex system of county 
government would inevitably break down have certainly not been 
verified. On the contrary, the county and district councils have, 
with few exceptions, properly discharged the statutory duties 
devolving upon them. Instances have no doubt occurred in which 
these bodies have, owing to inexperience and to an inadequate staff, 
found themselves in difficulties, and have had to receive some 
special assistance from us in regulating their affairs ; but this has 
been of rare occurrence, and we are confident that before the term 
of office of the first councils elected under the act expires the new 
machinery will be working very smoothly throughout Ireland." 

After another year's trial the board reported, in 1901 : 

"Our further experience enables us to confirm the statement in 
our last report as to the satisfactory manner in which the duties 
of the county councils and rural district councils have been dis- 



HOME RULE TESTED 251 

charged. No doubt in some instances there has been action, or 
sometimes inaction, which did not seem to accord with the inten- 
tions of the Legislature ; but, apart from such exceptional 
instances, their duties have been satisfactorily and creditably dis- 
charged by the councils and their officials throughout Ireland, and 
the councils, we are glad to observe, appear to recognize the zeal 
and ability with which they are served by their official staff." 

In 1902 the board had this to say: 

"The term of office of the first county councils and rural dis- 
tricts councils, on whom, with their officers, rests the credit of 
having successfully assisted in carrying the Local Government Act 
into operation, expired in June, and the new councils, with the 
experience of the past three years, will no doubt endeavor to bring 
the system into a state of even greater efficiency. 

"Attention has been directed to certain political differences, 
which have been introduced by some of the smaller bodies into their 
ordinary business transactions, with reference to the appointment 
of officers and the giving of contracts, but it is only fair to state 
that these cases have been quite the exception and not the rule; 
they have been promptly dealt with, and we feel confident that the 
conduct of their affairs by the various local authorities and their 
officials will continue to justify the delegation to them of the large 
powers transferred to their control by the Local Government 
Acts." 

In 1903 the report was virtually the same; since that 
date I find no general comment upon the work of the local 
bodies, the justice and efficiency of the system being taken for 
granted, after several years' trial; but in specific details the 
supervising board commends the industry and intelligence 
displayed. 

Economy and efficiency, therefore, mark the adminis- 
tration of these elected bodies. But how about the predicted 
oppression of the minority in the large number of districts 
where Nationalists far outnumber Unionists? How has the 
minority fared under Home Rule as applied to local affairs? 
To what extent have religious differences operated against 
the opponents of Nationalism, who said that those differences 
would cause discrimination and persecution? 

Figures are at hand showing the status of the elected 
bodies in 1907, since which there has been little change. 
At that time the county councils had the political complex- 
ion of the inhabitants of the various districts. It is difficult 
to see how it could be otherwise. Where nine-tenths of the 
people are Nationalists, it is not surprising to find the same 
proportion of Nationalists on the county council. Where 



252 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

there is a heavy preponderance of Unionists, most of the 
councilors naturally are of that party. Each council, more- 
over, appoints several score of public officers. Here there is 
abundant opportunity for "playing politics" and for the exer- 
cise of discrimination upon political and religious grounds. 

Yet the record completely refutes the assertion that 
Home Rule in local affairs means the exclusion of the minor- 
ity from public life. On the contrary, strongly Unionist 
councils make some Nationalist appointments and strongly 
Nationalist councils select many Unionists for paid offices. 
The records are conclusive, moreover, in showing that in 
districts where the sentiment is overwhelmingly Nationalist 
the minority gets far larger representation than does the 
Nationalist minority in districts overwhelmingly Unionist. 
It will be understood that political divisions virtually parallel 
religious divisions. Hence the terms Nationalist and Union- 
ist are about synonymous with Catholic and Protestant, 
although there are many Protestant Nationalists and Catho- 
lic Unionists. This explanation is made in order that the 
reader may observe that under Home Rule, in local affairs, 
both political and religious differences are being submerged 
in '-he desire for good and equitable administration. 

Taking a few counties at random, we find that Armagh, 
where fifty-six per cent, of the people are Unionists, the 
county council consists of eight Nationalists and twenty- 
two Unionists, but only three of the fifty salaried officers- 
employed are Nationalists. With a little more than half of 
the population, the Unionists take ninety-four per cent, of 
the appointments. Antrim, having a population of eighty 
per cent. Unionist, elects twenty-six Unionists among the 
twenty-nine councilors, and the council appoints sixty Union- 
ists and five Nationalists to salaried offices. With eighty 
per cent, of the popular vote the Unionists claim ninety-two 
per cent, of the jobs. Tyrone's population is 55 per cent. 
Nationalist, yet the council consists of sixteen Unionists to 
thirteen Nationalists. In the matter of appointments the 
Unionist majority makes full use of its power, naming no 
fewer than forty-seven out of the fifty-two officers. 

On the other hand, Cork, which is ninety per cent. 
Nationalist, elects a council composed exclusively of Na- 



HOME RULE TESTED 253 

tionalists, yet forty of the one hundred and ninety-one ap- 
pointments — more than twenty per cent. — are given to 
Unionists. Cavan likewise elects a wholly Nationalist coun- 
cil, yet twenty-six of fifty-six appointments — forty-six per 
cent. — of the salaried offices go to Unionists. 

As the opposition to local Home Rule has come wholly 
from Unionists, and wholly on the ground that it invites 
oppression of Unionist citizens, these figures are illuminat- 
ing. They show unmistakably that Nationalist districts 
treat the minority much more fairly and generously than 
Unionist districts. Those who have thought that the demo- 
cratic system would lead to discrimination against Unionists 
are invited to study the accompanying table. The first col- 
umn gives the percentage of the dominant party in the popu- 
lation, the second column gives the political division of the 
county council and the third column the salaried officers 
appointed, with their politics: ""* 

County. Population. Council. Appointments. 

Per cent. Nat. Un. Nat. Un.. 

Armagh 56 Un. 8 22 3 47 

Galway 94 Nat. 32 1 50 11 

Tyrone 55 Nat. 13 16 5 47 

Cork 90 Nat. All Nat. 151 40 

Fermanagh 55 Nat. 10 17 17 58 

Cavan 81 Nat. All Nat. 30 26 

West Meath 92 Nat. 26 5 37 17 

Kings 89 Nat. 27 1 21 19 

Limerick 95 Nat. 26 2 39 6 

Antrim 80 Un. 26 3 5 60 

Monaghan 73 Nat. 25 2 34 23 

Louth 90 Nat. 31 2 36 17 

Kildare 86 Nat. 23 3 31 9 

Clare 98 Nat. All Nat. 62 6 

Roscommon 98 Nat. 29 1 48 8 

Sligo 90 Nat. All Nat. 58 14 

Mayo 97 Nat. All Nat. 69 8 

Queens 88 Nat. All Nat. 25 11 

Tipperary, North 93 Nat. All Nat. 19 8 

Tipperary, South 94 Nat. 31 1 24 9 

Leitrim 90 Nat. 26 22 10 

Carlow 88 Nat. 23 2 27 18 

Kerry 97 Nat. All Nat. 93 19 

Meath 92 Nat. 29 2 38 14 

Summarized, these figures show that in the two Unionist 
counties the Unionists average sixty-eight per cent, of the 
population and hold ninety-three per cent, of the appoint- 



254 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

ments; while in the Nationalist counties the Nationalists aver- 
age eighty-seven and one-half per cent, of the population and 
hold seventy per cent, of the appointments. If Home Rule 
means discrimination, where does it appear? 

As I close these letters two curious pictures come to me. 
On a bright June day in 1900 I stood on the railroad plat- 
form at Pretoria, chatting with a stout, bearded man who 
leaned over the rear platform of a train. He was in mili- 
tary uniform, and the train was loaded with armed troops 
which he commanded, infantry and artillery. Over the 
stony hills to the southward came the irregular thud of field 
guns, for the attacking army was closing in on the Boer cap- 
ital. Presently the train pulled out, the man on the rear 
platform waving a courteous good-bye. 

It was General Louis Botha, commander of the Boer 
troops fighting the British forces, on his way to the front, to 
maintain for two years an unequal struggle against the 
Imperial armies. 

The other picture is seven years later — May, 1907. 
Outside the Guildhall, in London, the streets are packed with 
dense crowds, the buildings gay with many flags. Through 
the lanes of people rolls a carriage, preceded by a clattering 
squadron of mounted guards and followed by a mighty wave 
of cheers. From the carriage steps a stoutly built man in 
frock suit and silk hat. Bowing gravely to the plaudits of 
the crowd, he passes into the Guildhall, to be honored by the 
greatest men of England and her colonies. 

It is the Right Honorable General Louis Botha, Prime 
Minister of the Transvaal, political ruler of a self-governing 
unit of the Empire. 

Home Rule in the Transvaal, a free Parliament in Pre- 
toria, the enemy's commander as Prime Minister, within five 
years of the ending of the war. England can be just and 
generous to the Boer. Does Ireland deserve less? Will the 
interests of the Empire be conserved with less? 



^POSTSCRIPT 

THE RELIGIOUS QUESTION 

Here's for a friendly shirt-sleeve talk with those active 
correspondents who have been so frankly critical of my writ- 
ings on the Irish question. In the lull before the last two 
letters on the subject — only two more! — come clattering 
down on their unwilling heads, let us see where we stand. A 
personal discussion of this character has no sort of place in 
the general treatment of the subject, but it will serve to clear 
up some obscurities that are unavoidable in the haste of news- 
paper writing. First let me repeat the happy announcement 
that two more letters will complete the series. I am aware 
of several correspondents, most of them anonymous, who will 
be glad it's no worse. I can assure them they're not any 
more gratified than I am. For one whose time is pretty well 
occupied, the study and discussion of a matter as big as the 
Irish question is no idle amusement. 

More than one person, in a desire to express dissent, 
wrote that the letters made them "tired." I haven't the 
slightest doubt of it. They made me tired, too, and I never 
wrote anything with more genuine relief than I wrote the last 
word of the last sentence of the last letter. If I felt some- 
what exhausted, in spite of firm conviction that everything I 
wrote was true and fair, it is not astonishing that readers who 
differ should feel exhausted, too. Incidentally, let me urge 
them to read those two letters, even at the risk of further 
prostration. I've read their communications — the most 
severe ones with the greatest entertainment — and it's only 
fair that they should read mine. They're not bad letters, 
really. 

To begin at the beginning, the most frequent criticism 

_ *This statement was published just before the closing of the 
series of letters, in response to criticisms, the nature of which is 
indicated. 

255 



256 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

of my articles is upon religious grounds. As a matter of 
fact, that is not only the beginning, but the end and the mid- 
dle as well. With one or two exceptions, from persons who 
wrote intelligently as well as with conviction, the letters con- 
demned what I had written as being part of a religious con- 
troversy or propaganda. In a single breath, or rather with 
a single dip in the inkstand, these correspondents denounced 
me for dragging religion into the discussion and then proved 
I was a literary outcast because I did not make their religious 
views the paramount factor. One indignant person — I 
recall that his letter made a radiant break in a rather dull 
day — dismissed my labors with the charge that I was a "nar- 
row-minded bigot," hopelessly enslaved by the Church to 
which he assigned me. Perhaps this will be sufficient apology 
for the very personal disclosure that back of my Americanism 
is an ancestry of double-dyed Ulster Scotch-Irish and that 
the nearest approach to a saint in my church is John Wesley. 
[Upon my word, I don't see that this fact is of surpassing 
interest, now that I have written it. But if my views on 
Home Rule are to be repudiated on account of my theo- 
logical convictions, let's get the record straight.] 

So we come now to the important objection of my crit- 
ical friends. Why was religion introduced in the discussion 
at all? Setting aside the fact that nine out of ten of the 
opponents of Home Rule — those who have written about my 
articles, at least — oppose it on religious grounds, how can it 
be said that I introduced it? They might as well accuse me 
of inventing landlordism or of discovering Dublin Castle. 
One may deprecate the prominence of religion in the strife 
that has afflicted Ireland, but one cannot in fairness ignore it. 
It is a fact, and the discussion of Irish affairs which evades it 
is futile and dishonest. Religious differences made much of 
Irish history and were the direct and openly avowed inspira- 
tion of some of the most important legislation affecting the 
country. Religious discrimination is one of the evils charged 
against the present system of government; religion constitutes 
one of the great divisions of the people, and a conflict of 
religious convictions is at the bottom of the opposition to 
Home Rule. If religion was "dragged into" the Irish ques- 
tion, the dragging was done by Elizabeth, James I, William 








■ '-''<'■■•••' : il1 










. * . ' 


.•' ' • ,1 Q 


— 




.*.« ' s&i&^SBSl 



POSTSCRIPT 257 

III, James II and their Parliaments, but there's no use writ- 
ing peevish letters to them, because they're dead. And if it 
is kept in, the keeping is done by those who denounce the idea 
of self-government upon the ground that it would confer 
equal rights upon citizens of a different faith. It enters into 
the question in no other way. If the demand for Home 
Rule stood upon nothing more than religious grounds, it 
would never have had the devotion of a Gladstone or a 
Bright, or the indorsement of the British House of Com- 
mons, which it has at this very moment. Incidentally, it 
would not have interested The North American, and that 
would have saved me a lot of work and several readers 
irritation. 

But here comes a more friendly critic — about fifteen per 
cent. Home Ruler, this chap. You're right (he says,) to a 
certain extent. As an economic proposition, Ireland should 
have self-government. But why go back into history that 
ought to be forgotten (says he) and rake up old feuds and 
old animosities? If Ireland wins, it will be because the pres- 
ent system is wasteful, unjust and generally impossible and 
not because of alleged atrocities by James I or Cromwell. 

There's something in that, too. But not very much. 
Frankly, I took no particular pleasure in wandering around 
in the Middle Ages; but as luck would have it, that was when 
the "Irish Question" was made. A man who started to trace 
the development of the protective tariff and ignored every- 
thing back of, say, 1885, might produce a pleasing tract, but 
it would not be excessively valuable. So, if we want to know 
why all these problems have arisen in Ireland and why Eng- 
land must needs spend so much time in remedial legislation, 
we've got to go back to the days when the problems were 
fashioned. I "raked up" the Plantagenets and the Tudors 
and the Roundheads and all the rest of them because they 
were the persons who laid the foundations of the Irish Ques- 
tion of this year of grace 1909. And with all due respect 
to my critical friends, it is perfectly obvious that no one can 
judge that question fairly unless he does a little "raking" to 
begin with. 

As to old "animosities" — bless your hearts, it was ani- 
mosities that folks lived on (and died fromj in those iron 
17 



2 5 8 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

days. Once you take up the historical prologue — and you've 
got to do it to be fair with yourself in studying the matter — - 
you can no more dodge the prevailing animosities than you 
can dodge raindrops. Personally, I never tried to dodge 
them. They interest me, just as do any other facts which 
have a bearing upon the subject I am endeavoring to treat. 

For it must not be supposed that these "animosities" 
were the mere temporary results of racial and religious strife; 
if they were, God forbid that any one should rake them up. 
But the present problem, says our friend, is purely an eco- 
nomic proposition. That's a good, safe word, isn't it — 
economic? Very well, I am for it; with the added remark 
that the very "animosities" of old, which all of us regret and 
deplore, constitute one of the strongest factors in the eco- 
nomic situation of today. Landlordism, the "congested dis- 
tricts," the folly and injustice of Dublin Castle government 
— whence came these flowers of misrule? The seeds were 
planted in the stirring up of those very "animosities" which 
we are on on account to mention, but which, it seems, are 
to be accepted as the products of some sort of miraculous 
growth, without beginning and with very little chance of 
ending. 

There are those, I know, who cannot read the records of 
three or four hundred years ago without wanting to go out 
and lick the opposition. I envy them their activity of mind 
and passionate adherence to conviction, and if I have offended 
any such, let this be my assurance that I had no such inten- 
tion. For there were two reasons for the brief record which 
I made of past events. One was, as explained, to elucidate 
in some measure the questions of to-day to which they gave 
rise; the other was to contrast the present with the past — to 
bring into relief the bright prospect of a nation united, peace- 
ful and prosperous against that dark background of greed 
and intolerance. 

But even granting that I was animated by no ulterior 
— or shall we say Ulsterior? — motives, there are those who 
complain that the historical references were unfair, tending 
to accuse one side and excuse the other. Glancing over them, 
I am not moved to confess any such coloring of the record, 
despite obvious defects due to haste and the limitations of 



POSTSCRIPT 259 

space, for I observe that virtually every quotation I used was 
from an authority associated with the side which protests. 
Froude, Gladstone, Green, Lecky, Goldwin Smith — none of 
these, surely, can be accused of narrow-minded hostility to 
the English element in Ireland. Nor would any sane man 
attempt to maintain that one side monopolized the crime and 
violence, while the other side monopolized all the virtues. 
The story of those dark days, in truth, is a story of blood 
and oppression, of ruthless attack and savage reprisal, and 
the scars were deep on both sides; but the fact remains that 
the general, permanent effect, which alone justifies the his- 
torical discussion, was to lay upon the great mass of the Irish 
people a burden of poverty and misrule from which they are 
to-day entitled to relief. 

And here's another type of critic. He is familiar with 
tne course of events, and inclined, apparently, to be friendly 
to the Home Rule cause, but he asks rather warmly why 
England's treatment of Ireland to-day should be condemned 
as mercilessly as that of past centuries. "Why," he says, 
"do you ignore all the costly reforms of the last generation? 
What other country has ever undertaken such revolutionary 
works of progress as England has undertaken in Ireland? 
Your purpose seems to be not to remark and aid that prog- 
ress, but to stir up fresh hatred of England." 

This rather saddens me. It really does. Because it is 
a condemnation of the one quality which I aimed to achieve 
in my articles — clearness. I went to Ireland this summer, 
after a lapse of seven years, expressly to record the remark- 
able improvements wrought through legislation, and I was 
under the pleasing impression that I had described and dis- 
cussed those improvements, and applauded that legislation, 
to< the extent of an almost scandalous number of columns. 
While the fact is of no public interest, since my fairness in 
this regard is questioned, I may say that I have a rather 
strong predilection for England ; that I have more friends in 
England than in Ireland, and that I consider England, 
through her abler statesmen, has worked manfully during 
recent years to undo the wrongs of centuries. Yet continued 
condemnation of the system of government is perfectly justi- 
fied. If for no other reason, let it be because no reform 



260 THE DEMAND FOR HOME RULE 

worth while was ever won without agitation. This involves 
criticism from which a tinge of bitterness is inseparable, but 
when it descends to unreasoning hatred, it may well be 
ignored, because it is ineffective. We don't forget, by the 
way — and we urge the excited opponents of Home Rule not 
to forget — that public opinion in England, as reflected in the 
House of Commons, is strongly for rendering political jus- 
tice to Ireland. 

To keep these remarks from extending to* the length of 
the original articles, let us mention only one more critic. He 
objects to our referring to the "Irish" demand for Home 
Rule, because, he says, it is merely a factional demand. 
"Why don't you give Ulster's side of the dispute?" he asks. 
"Isn't Ulster entitled to a show?" Ulster's side, Unionism, 
is easily given. It is opposition to Home Rule. It is the 
negation of all that is represented in the movement for self- 
government. As for giving Ulster a "show," no fair- 
minded man would urge less. It is justly entitled to twenty- 
five per cent, of representation in the government ; it has con- 
trolled one hundred per cent, too long. 

I take leave of the subject now with the hope that all 
of us have learned something by the discussion. I have, 
anyway, and the hardest jolts from my critics have been 
accepted cheerfully. Upon the main question we do not 
agree, but I am as certain as I can be of anything that the 
future will bring us nearer together. For Home Rule is 
coming; the public opinion of Ireland, of England, of the 
British colonies, of the United States, is for it, and will pre- 
vail. And when Home Rule does come, and has spread 
peace and brotherhood and justice where strife has too long 
ruled, its opponents will no more condemn the new order 
than they condemn the other reforms which they fought and 
then embraced. 



INDEX 



Act of 1870, 17, 112; of 1881, 112; Ash- 
bourne, 113; of 18S6, 113; of 1891, 113; 
of 1896, 113; of 1909, 115, 140, 141; of 
Edward III, used in coercion, 95. 

Agricultural laborers, aid to, 183; 
wages of, 234. 

Agriculture, in 1902, 5; chief industry, 
13; difficulties of, 17; schemes to 
improve, 136. 

American aid to Irish, 32, 42, 169; 
sympathy with Home Rule, 213, 260; 
revolution inspired Irish, 201. 

Australia, Home Rule in, 245. 

Balfour, A. J., causes creation of 
Congested Districts Board, 127; on 
destruction of Irish industries, 241. 

Bessborough Commission, 26, 79. 

Birrell, Augustine, Chief Secretary, 
Land Purchase Act introduced by, 
115, 141, 142. 

Boers, Irish sympathy with, 3, 98. 

Bright, John, 24. 

Bryce, James, on Irish government, 
222. ' 

Butt, Isaac, 216. 

Canada, Home Rule won by, 245-247; 
was disloyal, 246. 

Castlebar, congestion near, 80; an 
incident of coercion in, 101. 

Castlerea, 54, 80, 144. 

Catholics, laws against, 197,202; re- 
gained some rights, 202; vote, 203; 
emancipation of, 211, 212; course of, 
in local self-government, 251-254. 

Cavendish, Lord, murder of, 217. 

Chamberlain, Joseph, on government 
of Ireland, 222, 228. 

Charles I 9. 

Chief Secretaries, all Protestant, 223; 
powers of, 230-232; some good, 232. 

Christianity, early Irish. 189-190. 

Church, established Anglican, 210; 
disestablishment, 215. 216. 

Clare Island, congestion on, 30; 
Transformed, 76, 133-135. 

Crime, agrarian, 13, 17, 26, 217; statis- 
tics of, in England, Scotland and 
Ireland, 235-238. 

Crimes Act, coercion enforced by. 93, 
94, 96. (See Coercion.) 

Coercion, 4; described, 81-90, 91-102; 
a list of prisoners under, 92-93; en- 
forced, 95, 217, 221, 243. 

Colleges, in National University, 177. 
(See Education.) 

Compulsory sale, necessary, 115, 140. 



141; under Birrell Act, 115, 140. (See 
Land Purchase, Landlordism.) 

Confiscations of land, 8, 9, 14, 115. 117; 
under Mary, 193; under Elizabeth, 
193; under James I, 193; under 
Cromwell, 9, 14, 115, 194, 195; under 
William III, 195. (See Landlordism.) 

Congested Districts, described by 
William O'Brien, 30-35; described, 
72-80; extent of, 72; map of, 74; offi- 
cial reports on, 74, 79, 80, 115; im- 
proved conditions in, 126-173; de- 
fined, 128, 129; causes of poverty in, 
130; trip through, 144-173. 

Congested Districts Board, Dillon 
estate bought by, 51; improved by, 
64, 65; Clare Island improved by, 
76, 133-135; work of, 126-173; creation 
of, 127; powers of, 12S, 131, 122; aids 
to industries by, 136-140; some es- 
tates improved by, 154; improve- 
ments encouraged by, 156-161. (See 
Congested Districts, Land Pur- 
chase.) 

Connaught, migration of laborers 
from, 78; Irish driven to. 193. (See 
Congested Districts.) 

Conquests of Ireland, 190-196. 

Constabulary, 34; arrests by, 82, 84, 
85; powers of, under coercion, 94-96, 
99; crimes committed by members 
of, 99, 100; at an eviction, 11S-125; 
number and cost of, 234-238. 

Cork, 30, 129, 142. 

Cornwallis, Lord, misrule denounced 
by, 204, 205. 

Cost of government, 232-238. 

Cottage industries, 138. 

County Councils, 248-254. 

Cromwell, Oliver, 9, 14, 115, 194, 195. 

Davis, Thomas, 212, 243. 

Davitt, Michael, 216. 

De Freyne estate, 62-66, 69-71, 84, 87, 
154. 

Devon Commission, 13, 14, 112. 

Dillon estate, 50, 51, 64-66, 69-71, 135, 
154. 

Dillon, John, M. P., on land prob- 
lem, 107-111, 126; on National Uni- 
versity, 178. 

Dillon, John Blake, 212. 

Disestablishment, 215, 216. 

Disloyalty in Ireland, 3, 4; causes 
of, 81; could be overcome, 86; due 
to misgovernment, 98; paralleled in 
Canada, 215-247. 



262 



INDEX 



Donegal, congestion in, 30, 129; mi- 
gration of laborers from, 79; fish- 
ing industries in, 137. 
Doran, Henry, 171. (See Preface.) 
Drainage improvements, 154. (See 
Congested Districts Board, work 

Dublin Castle, coercion by, 82-102; 
government by, 228-247; differs from 
English and Scotch system, 229, 
230; public has no control over, 
230-282- departments under, 231, 232; 
extravagance of, 232-238; overtaxa- 
tion 233; compared with England 
and' Scotland, 233, 234; Constabu- 
lary, 234-238; system a failure, 239- 
247 ' (See Home Rule.) 

Dufferin, Lord, on Fenianism, 215; 
on destruction of Irish industries, 

242. 

Duffy, Charles Gavan, 212, 214. 

Dunraven, Earl of, on misgovern- 
ment, 228. M (MI1M 

Economic conditions, 5, 21, 103-106. 
(See Poverty, Population, Land- 
lordism, Congested Districts, Emi- 
gration.) 

Educational reform, 174-1SO, 184. 

Elizabeth, Queen, plantations and 
confiscations by, 8, 14, 193; insur- 
rections under, 193. 

Emigration, 5, 13, 23, 24, 36, 47, 241. 

Emmet. Robert, 210, 243. 

Eviction, 16. IS, 23, 26, 56-60; a vic- 
tim's story of, 60-64; practice of, 
68 69- De Freyne estate, 84; after 
the Famine, 112, 212, 213; descrip- 
tion of an, 118-125; victims of, re- 
stored to lands, 182, 183. 

Extravagance of government, 2Si- 
238 (See Dublin Castle.) 

Famine, 12, 22, 112. 212, 213. 

Fenianism, 24, 214, 215. 

Fishing industry, aided by Congest- 
ed Districts Board, 132, 137. 

Fitzgerald. Lord Edward, 204. 

Fitzgibbon, John, 54-71, 81-90, 145,146. 

Foxford woolen mills, 138. 

Free speech, suppression of, 5, 94; 
imprisonment for, 81-90. (See Co- 
ercion.) 

Galway, 129, 137. 

Garrison, English, sway of, 219-247. 

Gladstone, 12, 17, 24, 210; on Fenian- 
ism 215' negotiations with Parnell, 
217' Home Rule bill of 1886, 217: 
Home Rule bill of 1893, 217. (See 
Acts.) 

Grattan, Henry, 201-203, 206. 

Grazers, lands held by, 40-53, 67-69, 
116, 117. (See Landlordism.) 

History, of land problem, 6-10. 116; 
of Ireland, 188-216. (See Land Prob- 
lem, Congested Districts, Evic- 
tions.) 

Home Rule, sentiment for, increased 
by land purchase, 110; demand for, 



185-260; Redmond on, 1S5; economic 
reforms no substitute for, 185, 186; 
defined, 186, 187; historic basis of 
demand for, 1S8-218; Parnell, Davitt 
and, 216; Gladstone's bills for, 217; 
need for, 219-247; real "Unionism in, 
244; in the colonies, 245-247; Can- 
ada's fight for, 246; tested in local 
affairs, 248-254; approved by Local 
Government Board, 250, 251. (See 
Dublin Castle.) 

House of Commons, rejects Home 
Rule in 1S86, 217; passes Home Rule 
bill in 1S93, 218; Irish Party in, 227;. 
for Home Rule, 247. 

Houses, improved, 154-173; for labor- 
ers, 183. 

Imprisonment under coercion, 81-102. 

Improvement in conditions, 46, 47. 51, 
103-173; described by John Dillon, 
108-111; by Congested Districts 
Board, 132-173; plans of, 159-161. 
(See Congested Districts Board, 
Land Purchase.) 

Incumbered estates, 25, 112, 116. 

Industries, aids to, 136-140; destruc- 
tion of, 241, 242. 

Insurrections, under Elizabeth, 193; 
of 1641, 194; in nineteenth century, 
243. 

Invasions, 7-10; by Norsemen, 190; 
by Strongbow, 191; by Henry II, 
191; by the Tudors, 192, 193; by 
Cromwell, 194, 195; by William III, 
195. 

Irish Parliamentary Party, 174, 227. 

James I. confiscations under, 9, 14. 

Jury, silenced by a magistrate, 97; 
trial by, denied, 5, 82, 94. 

Kerrv, 129; an eviction in, 11S-125. 

Kiltimagh, 40-53, 139, 168-173. 

Land Acts, 17, 21, 24, 26, 33, 112, 113, 
115, 140, 141. 

Land Commission, 27, 2S, 70. 

Landlordism system of, described, 
11, 13, 16-20; effects of, 21-28; Will- 
iam O'Brien on, 29-35; absentee, 38; 
effects of. 40-65; a victim's story of. 
60-64; a village under, 162-167. (See 
Congested Districts, Eviction, Ten- 
ants, Landlords, Land Problem, 
Land Purchase.) 

Landlords, who won't sell, 141; 
against Home Rule, 224. (See 
Landlordism.) 

Land League, 26, 69, 216. 

Land Problem, history of, 6-10, 21-28; 
making of, 11-15; history of, by 
Devon Commission, 14; summary 
of, 15; described by John Fitzgib- 
bon, 67-71; solution of, 103-173; John 
Dillon. 107-111; history of, 111-117. 
(See Landlordism.) 

Land Purchase, advocated by Will- 
iam O'Brien. 33; of Dillon estate, 
51; denounced by coercion magis- 
trate, 97; Wyndham Act, 106; Ash- 



INDEX 



263 



bourne Act, 113; other acts, 113-115; 
illustrated on Clare Island, 133-135; 
success of, 132-173; Dillon estate, 
135, 136, 154; woman tells of, 149-151; 
acts, 182, 217. (See Land Acts, 
Landlordism.) 

Leases, forced on tenants, 26. (See 
Landlordism.) 

Leitrim, 9, 30, 129. 

Literature, early Irish, 189, 190. 

Local government, Home Rule in, 
248-254; act providing, 249. 

Lords Lieutenant, coercion enforced 
by, 94, 95; have all been Protes- 
tants, 223; functions of, 230; salary 
of, 233. 

Magistrates, powers of, under co- 
ercion, 81-102. 

Manufacturing, encouragement of, 
138, 139. 

Massacres, 8, 9, 194. 

Mayo, 30, 40-53, 80, 129, 137, 144-173. 

Middlemen, 14. (See Landlordism.) 

Migration of laborers, 5, 32, 36, 42, 
77-80. (See Congested Districts.) 

Misgovernment, 3; denounced by T. 
W. Russell, M. P., 96, 208-247. (S^e 
Coercion, Dublin Castle, Landlord- 
ism.) 

Mitchel, John, 212, 243. 

Morley, Lord, Chief Secretary, 88. 

Morris, Judge, coercion decisions by, 
84, 87-90, 97. 

Murphy, Joseph, M. P., 119, 120, 123, 
125. 

Nationalists, in local government 
bodies, 251-254. (See Irish Parlia- 
mentary Party.) 

National University, 178-180. 

Newspapers, prosecuted under co- 
ercion, 94. 

Nineteenth century, history of, 208- 
217. 

North American, first visit to Ire- 
land by correspondent of, 1-102; 
second visit, 103-260. (See Preface 
and Postscript.) 

O'Brien, Smith. 212, 243. 

O'Brien, William, M. P., 29-35. 

O'Connell, Daniel, 211, 212. 

O'Hara, Rev. Denis, 40-53, 139, 168-173. 

O'Kelly, Conor, M. P., 89. 

Pale, English, 191. (See Garrison, 
History of Ireland.) 

Parish committees, 139, 140, 160, 161. 

Parliament, Irish, 12; freed, 202, 203; 
destroyed, 205-207; industries fos- 
tered by, 242. 

Parnell, Charles Stuart, 216, 217. 

Penal laws, 14, 197-202. 

Phoenix Park murders, 217. 

Pigott, Richard, forgeries by, 217. 

Plantations, 8, 9. 14, 115. (See Con- 
fiscations, Invasions, History.) 

Political conditions, 4. 5, 103-106; divi- 
sions, 223, 224. 

Pollock, Allan, 68. 69. 



Population, 5, 24, 212, 234, 240. (See 
Congested Districts.) 

Poverty, 43-47, 73, 129, 131. (See Con- 
gested Districts). 

Presbyterians, 210, 215, 216. 

Prisons, cost of, 233; unused, 237. 

Prosperity, under land purchase, 184. 

Protestants, slain in rebellion of 1641, 
194; joined revolt, 203; Nationalist 
leaders among, 212, 243; in local 
government, 251-254. 

Quaker Nationalist, a, 228, 229. 

Rebellion, of 1798, 205; of 1848, 212. 
(See Fenianism.) 

Redmond, John E., M. P., on Home 
Rule, 185; party leader, 227. (See 
Introduction.) 

Religious prejudice passing, 3; no 
discrimination under local self-gov- 
ernment, 251-254; religious question, 
223, 225, 226, 255-260. 

Rents, arbitrary raising of, 18, 26; 
reduced by courts, 27, 28, 113. (See 
Landlordism, Eviction, Congested 
Districts.) 

Repeal of the Union, agitation for, 
211. 

Roscommon, 30, 56-60, 60-66, 129, 146, 
144-161. 

Rosebery, Lord, on misgovernment, 
228. 

Russell, T. W., M. P., on landlord- 
ism, 3, 20; on misgovernment, 12; 
on poverty, 21; on Land Commis- 
sion, 27; on coercion, 96; assault on, 
while speaking, 101, 102. 

Scotch settlers. (See Plantations, 
Ulster.) 

Scotland, government of, compared 
with Ireland, 233, 234. 

Sligo, 30, 129. 

Smith, Goldwin, 198, 204. 

South Africa, Home Rule in, 245, 254. 

Stephens, James, 214. 

Strongbow, 7, 191. 

Stuarts, confiscations under the, 9, 
10, 193, 194. 

Swinford, 80. 

Taxation, 233, 243. 

Tenant League, 214. 

Tenant right, 17, 24. (See Act of 1870, 
Ulster Custom.) 

Tenants, improvements of, seized by 
landlords, 67; become land owners, 
113-115, 133-135, 149-151; help them- 
selves, 155-161. (See Landlordism, 
Eviction, Land Acts, Land League, 
Congested Districts.) 

Three F's established, 26, 112. (See 
Land Acts.) 

Tone, Wolfe, 203, 204. 225. 

Trinity College. Dublin, 174-178. 

Tudor invasions, 9, 10, 192, 193. 

Ulster, plantations, 9, 193; Custom, 
15, 20; prosperity of, 224, 225; in re- 
bellion, 225; conflict of tendencies 



264 



INDEX 



in, 226; industries of, 242, 243; emi- University of Ireland, National, 174- 

gration from, 242; parallel of, in 178. 

the colonies, 245. West, problem of the, 30-39, 77. (See 

Under Secretaries, few Catholic, 223; Congested Districts.) 

powers of, 230. Westport, 35-39, 80. 

Union, Act of, denounced by Glad- Wexford, 7, 9, 194. 

stone, 12, 206-208; evils of, 211; a William III, 9, 195. 

failure, 218. (See Dublin Castle.) Wyndham, George, Chief Secretary, 

Unionists, 224; fairly treated in local 88; Land Act by, 106, 114. 

self-government, 252-254. Young, Arthur, on Landlordism, 5#. 

United Irish League, 5, 52, 227. Young Ireland movement, 212. 



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